June 2013 – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Sexbots, Ethics, and Transhumans

Clyde DeSouza — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:24:11 +0000

“I zoomed in as she approached the steps of the bridge, taking voyeuristic pleasure in seeing her pixelated cleavage fill the screen.

What was it about those electronic dots that had the power to turn people on? There was nothing real in them, but that never stopped millions of people every day, male and female, from deriving sexual gratification by interacting with those points of light.

It must all be down to our perception of reality”. –Memories with Maya

We are transitional humans; Transhumans:

Transhumanism is about using technology to improve the human condition. Perhaps a nascent stigma attached to the transhumanist movement in some circles comes from the ethical implications and usage of high technology — bio-tech and nano-tech to name a few, on people. Yet, being transhuman does not necessarily have to be associated with bio-hacking the human body, or entail the donning of cyborg-like prosthetics. Although it is hard not to plainly see and recognize the benefits such human augmentation technology has, for persons in need.

Orgasms and Longevity:

Today, how many normal people, even staunch theists, can claim not to use sexual aids and visual stimulation in the form of video or interaction via video, to achieve sexual satisfaction? It’s hard to deny the therapeutic effect an orgasm has in improving the human condition. In brief, some benefits to health and longevity associated with regular sex and orgasms:

When we orgasm we release hormones, including oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin equals relaxation, and when released it can help us calm down and feel euphoric.
People having more sex add years to their lifespan. Dr. Oz touts a 200 orgasms a year guideline. [1]

Recommended reading: The Science of Orgasm [2]

While orgasms usually occur as a result of physical sexual activity, there is no conclusive study that proves beneficial orgasms are only produced when sexual activity involves two humans. Erotica in the form of literature and later, moving images, have been used to stimulate the mind into inducing an orgasm for a good many centuries in the absence of a human partner. As technology is the key enabler in stimulating the mind, what might the sexual choices (preferences?) of the human race — the Transhuman be, going forward?

Enter the Sexbot…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7TTubkvGu8#t=1m19s

(Gray Scott speaking on Sexbots at 1:19 minutes into the video)

SexBots and Digital Surrogates [Dirrogates]

Sexbots, or sex robots can come in two forms. Fully digital incarnations with AI, viewed through Augmented Reality visors, or as physical robots — advanced enough to pass off as human surrogates. The porn industry has always been at the fore-front of video and interactive innovation, experimenting with means of immersing the audience into the “action”. Gonzo Porn [3] is one such technique that started off as a passive linear viewing experience, then progressed to multi-angle DVD interactivity and now to Virtual Reality first person point-of-view interactivity.

Augmented Reality and Digital Surrogates of porn stars performing with AI built in, will be the next logical step. How could this be accomplished?

Somewhere on hard-drives in Hollywood studios, there are full body digital models and “performance capture” files of actors and actresses. When these perf-cap files are assigned to any suitable 3D CGI model, an animator can bring to life the Digital Surrogate [Dirrogate] of the original actor. Coupled with realistic skin rendering using Separable Subsurface Scattering (SSSS) rendering techniques [4] for instance, and with AI “behaviour” libraries, these Dirrogates can populate the real world, enter living-rooms and change or uplift the mood of person — for the better.

(The above video is for illustration purposes of 3D model data-sets and perf-capture)

With 3D printing of human body parts now possible and blue prints coming online [5] with full mechanical assembly instructions, the other kind of sexbot is possible. It won’t be long before the 3D laser-scanned blueprint of a porn star sexbot will be available for licensing and home printing, at which point, the average person will willingly transition to transhuman status once the ‘buy now’ button has been clicked.

Programmable matter — Claytronics [6] will take this technology to even more sophisticated levels.

Sexbots and Ethics:

If we look at Digital Surrogate Sexbot technology, which is a progression of interactive porn, we can see the technology to create such Dirrogate sexbots exists today, and better iterations will come about in the next couple of years. Augmented Reality hardware when married to wearable technology such as ‘fundawear’ [7] and a photo-realistic Dirrogate driven by perf-captured libraries of porn stars under software (AI) control, can bring endless sessions of sexual pleasure to males and females.

Things get complicated as technology evolves, and to borrow a term from Kurzweil, exponentially. Recently the Kinect 2 was announced. This off the shelf hardware ‘game controller’ in the hands of capable hackers has shown what is possible. It can be used as a full body performance capture solution, a 3D laser scanner that can build a replica of a room in realtime and more…

Which means, during a dirrogate sexbot session where a human wears an Augmented Reality visor such as Meta-glass [8], it would be possible to connect via the internet to your partner, wife or husband and have their live perf-capture session captured by a Kinect 2 controller and drive the photo-realistic Dirrogate of your favorite pornstar.

Would this be the makings of Transhumanist adultry? Some other ethical issues to ponder:

Thou shalt not covet their neighbors wife — But there is no commandant about pirating her perf-capture file.
Will humans, both male or female, prefer sexbots versus human partners for sexual fulfillment? — Will oxytocin release make humans “feel” for their sexbots?
As AI algorithms get better…bordering on artificial sentience, will sexbots start asking for “Dirrogate Rights”?

These are only some of the points worth considering… and if these seem like plausible concerns, imagine what happens in the case of humanoid like physical Sex-bots. As Gray Scott mentions in his video above.

As we evolve into Transhumans, we will find ourselves asking that all important question “What is Real?”

“It will all be down to our perception of reality”. – Memories with Maya

Table of References:

[i] Human Augmentation: Be bionic arm - http://bebionic.com/the_hand/patient_stories/nigel_ackland

[1] http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-4648/10-Reasons-to-Up-You…tient.html

[2] The Science of Orgasm- http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/080188490X?tag=lifeboatfound-…atfound-20

[3] Gonzo Pornography - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_pornography

[4] Separable subsurface scattering rendering - http://dirrogate.com/realtime-photorealistic-human-skin-rendering/

[5] 3D Printing of Body parts - http://inmoov.blogspot.fr/p/assembly-help.html

[6] Programmable Matter; Claytronics - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~claytronics/claytronics/

[7] Fundawear: Wearable sex underwear - http://www.fundawearreviews.com/

[8] Meta-view: Digital see through Augmented Reality visor - http://www.meta-view.com/

Extreme Lifespans via Exposure to Information

Marios Kyriazis — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 06:01:11 +0000

It may be possible one day to use effective biotechnological therapies in order to achieve extreme lifespans. In the meantime, instead of just waiting for these therapies, it may be more fruitful to live a life of constant stimulation, hyper-connection and avoidance of regularity. This is something that everybody can do today, and may have a direct impact upon radical life extension, not only for the individual but also for society.

For some time now I have been advocating the notion that exposure to meaningful information may be one way of achieving radical life extension. By meaningful information I mean anything that requires action, and not just feeding your brain with routine sets of data. Examples of this include being hyper-connected in a digital world, an enriched environment (both in the personal space and in society as a whole), a hormetic lifestyle, behavioural models such as a goal-seeking behaviour, search for excellence, and a bias for action, as well as the pursuit innovation, diversification, creativity and novelty. Most importantly, the avoidance of routine and mediocrity.

This information-rich lifestyle up-regulates the function of the brain and may have an impact upon cell immortalisation. In my latest paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.2734 I provide an explanation of the exact mechanisms. I argue that the relentless exposure to useful information creates new and persisting demands for energy resources in order for this information to be assimilated by the neurons. If this process continues for some time, there will come a point where our biological mechanisms will undergo a phase transition, in effect creating a new biology. Not one based on sex and reproduction but one based on information and somatic survival.

One possible mechanism involves the immortalisation sequences of germ cells. As we know, the DNA in germ cells is essentially immortal because it is somehow able to repair age-related damage effectively. Recent research shows that some of these immortalisation mechanisms do not originate from the germ cells but from the somatic cells! In other words, our bodily cells create biological material such as error-free sequences of DNA and instead of using this themselves for their own survival, they pass it on to the germ cells to assure the survival of the species. This means that the germ-line remains immortal whereas the bodily cells eventually age and die.

The process may be forcibly changed, by overloading the system with high quality actionable information. As explained above, the assimilation of this information demands so much energy and resources from the organism that there will come a point when nature will have to make a choice: is it more economical from the thermodynamic point of view to continue the current cycle of birth, aging and death (with an immortal DNA), or is it better to downgrade this model and favour a new process of somatic survival and improved development in the same individual who would be able to live much longer? The force of evolution in a modern technological, information-laden niche may eventually favour the latter.

Also see here: http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/12/06/the-longevity-of-real-human-avatars/

Help Conquer Death with Grants & Research Funding from LongeCity!

Franco Cortese — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:55:08 +0000

LongeCity has been doing advocacy and research for indefinite life extension since 2002. With the Methuselah Foundation and the M-Prize’s rise in prominence and public popularity over the past few years, it is sometimes easy to forget the smaller-scale research initiatives implemented by other organizations.

LongeCity seeks to conquer the involuntary blight of death through advocacy and research. They award small grants to promising small-scale research initiatives focused on longevity. The time to be doing this is now, with the increasing popularity and public awareness of Citizen Science growing. The 2020 H+ Conference’s theme was The Rise of the Citizen Scientist. Open –Source and Bottom-Up organization have been hallmarks of the H+ and TechProg communities for a while now, and the rise of citizen science parallels this trend.

Anyone can have a great idea, and there are many low-hanging fruits that can provide immense value and reward to the field of life extension without necessitating large-scale research initiatives, expensive and highly-trained staff or costly laboratory equipment. These low-hanging fruit can provide just as much benefit as large scale ones – and, indeed, even have the potential to provide more benefit per unit of funding than large-scale ones. They don’t call them low-hanging fruit for nothing – they are, after all, potentially quite fruitful.

In the past LongeCity has raised funding by matching donations made by the community to fund a research project that used lasers to ablate (i.e. remove) cellular lipofuscin. LongeCity raised $8,000 dollars by the community which was then matched by up to $16,000 by SENS Founation. A video describing the process can be found here. In the end they raised over $18,000 towards this research! Recall that one of Aubrey’s strategies of SENS is to remove cellular lipofuscin via genetically engineered bacteria. Another small-scale research project funded by LongeCity involved mitochondrial uncoupling in nematodes. To see more about this research success, see here.

LongeCity’s second successfully funded research initiative was Mitochondrial uncoupling . More information can be found here. This project studied the benefits of transplanting microglia in the aging nervous system.

LongeCity’s 3rd success was their project on Microglia Stem Cells in 2010. The full proposal can be found here, and more information on this second successful LongeCity research initiative can be found here.

LongeCity’s fourth research-funding success was on Cryonics in 2012, specifically uncovering the mechanisms of cryoprotectant toxicity.

These are real projects with real benefits that LongeCity is funding. Even if you’re not a research scientist, you can have an impact on the righteous plight to end the involuntary blight of death, by applying for a small-scale research grant from LongeCity. What have you got to lose? Really? Because it seems to me that you have just about everything to gain.

LongeCity has also contributed toward larger scale research and development initiatives in the past as well. They have sponsored projects by Alcor, SENS Foundation and Methuselah Foundation. They crowdsourced a longevity-targeted multivitamin supplement called VIMMORTAL based on bottom-up-style community suggestion and deliberation (one of the main benefits of crowdsourcing).

So? Are you interested in impacting the movement toward indefinite life extension? Then please take a look at the various types of projects listed below that LongeCity might be interested in funding.

— — — — — — — — —

The following types of projects can be supported:

• Science support: contribution to a scientific experiment that can be carried out in a short period of time with limited resources. The experiment should be distinguishable from the research that is already funded by other sources. This could be a side-experiment in an existing programme, a pilot experiment to establish feasibility, or resources for an undergrad or high-school student.

• Chapters support: organizing a local meeting with other LongeCity members or potential members. LongeCity could contribute to the room hire, the expenses of inviting a guest speaker or even the bar tab.

• Travel support: attendance at conferences, science fairs etc. where you are presenting on a topic relevant to LongeCity. Generally this will involve some promotion of the mission and/or a report on the then conference to be shared with our Members

• Grant writing:

Bring together a team of scientists and help them write a successful grant application to a public or private funding body. Depending on the project, the award will be a success premium or sometimes can cover the costs of grant preparation itself.

• Micro matching fundraiser:

If you manage to raise funds on a mission-relevant topic, LongeCity will match the funds raised. (In order to initiate one of these initiatives LongeCity usually also requires that the fundraiser spends at least 500 ‘ThankYou points’ but this requirement can be waived in specific circumstances.)

• Outreach:

Support for a specific initiative raising public awareness of the mission or of a topic relevant to our mission. This could be a local event, a specific, organized direct marketing initiative or a media feature.

• Articles:

Write a featured article for the LongeCity website on a topic of interest to our members or visitors. LongeCity is mainly looking for articles on scientific topics, but well-researched contributions on a relevant topic in policy, law, or philosophy are also welcome.

Grant Size:

‘micro grants’ — up to $180

‘small grants’ — up to $500

Grant applications exceeding $500 can be received, but will not be evaluated conclusively under the small grants scheme. Instead, LongeCity will review the application as draft and may invite a full application afterward.

Decisions as part of the small grants programme are usually pretty quick and straightforward. However please contact LongeCity with a proposal ahead of time, as they will not normally consider applications where the money has already been spent!

Proposals can be as short or elaborate as necessary, but normally should be about half a page long.

Only LongeCity Members can apply, but any Member is free to apply on behalf of someone else — thus, non-Members are welcome to find a Member to ‘sponsor’ their application.

Please email [email protected] with your proposal.

You can also use the ideas forum to prepare the proposal. For general questions, or to discuss the proposal informally, feel free to contact LongeCity at the above email.

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Vaccinate against B.S.O.D — Insure your Memories.

Clyde DeSouza — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 07:50:52 +0000

“…and on the third day he rose again…”

If we approach the subject from a non theist point of view, what we have is a re-boot. A restore of a previously working “system image”. Can we restore a person to the last known working state prior to system failure?

As our Biological (analog) life get’s more entwined with the Digital world we have created, chances are, there might be options worth exploring. It all comes down to “Sampling” — taking snapshots of our analog lives and storing them digitally. Today, with reasonable precision we can sample, store and re-create most of our primary senses, digitally. Sight via cameras, sound via microphones, touch via haptics and even scents can be sampled and/or synthesized with remarkable accuracy.

Life as Routines, Sub-routines and Libraries:

In the story “Memories with Maya”, Krish the AI researcher put forward in simple language, some of his theories to the main character, Dan:

“Humans are creatures of habit,” he said. “We live our lives following the same routine day after day. We do the things we do with one primary motivation–comfort.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I said. “What about random acts. Haven’t you done something crazy or on impulse?”
“Even randomness is within a set of parameters; thresholds,” he said.

If we look at it, the average person’s week can be broken down to typical activities per day and a branch out for the weekend. The day can be further broken down into time-of-day routines. Essentially, what we have are sub-routines, routines and libraries that are run in an infinite loop, until wear and tear on mechanical parts leads to sector failures. Viruses also thrown into the mix for good measure.

Remember: we are looking at the typical lives of a good section of society — those who have resigned their minds to accepting life as it comes, satisfied in being able to afford creature comforts every once in a while. We aren’t looking at the outliers — the Einsteins, the Jobs the Mozarts. This is ironic, in that, it would be easier to back-up, restore, and resurrect the average person than it would be to do the same for outliers.

Digital Breadcrumbs — The clues we leave behind.

What exactly does social media sites mean by “What’s on your mind?” — Is it an invitation to digitize our Emotions, our thoughts, our experiences via words, pictures, sounds and videos? Every minute, Gigabytes (a conservative estimate) of analog life is being digitized and uploaded to the metaphoric “Cloud” — a rich mineral resource, ripe for data mining by “deeplearning” systems. At some point in the near future, would AI combined with technologies such as Quantum Archeology, Augmented Reality and Nano-tech, allow us to run our brains (minds?) on a substrate independent platform?

If that proposition turns your geek on, here’s some ways that you can live out a modern day version of Hansel and Gretel, insuring you find your way home, by leaving as many digital bread crumbs as you can via:

Mind Files — Terasem and Lifenaut:

What is the LifeNaut Project?

The long-term goal is to test whether given a comprehensive database, saturated with the most relevant aspects of an individual’s personality, future intelligent software will be able to replicate an individual’s consciousness. So, perhaps in the next 20 or 30 years technology will be developed to upload these files, together with futuristic software into a body of some sort – perhaps cellular, perhaps holographic, perhaps robotic. LifeNaut.com is funded by the Terasem Movement Foundation, Inc.

The LifeNaut Project is organized as a research experiment designed to test these hypotheses:

(1) a conscious analog of a person may be created by combining sufficiently detailed data about the person (“mindfile & biofile”) using future consciousness software (“mindware”), and

(2) such a conscious analog may be downloaded into a biological or nanotechnological body to provide life experiences comparable to those of a typically birthed human.

Sign-up and start creating your MindFile today.

Voice Banking:

Read about Voice Banking, Speech Reconstruction and how natural human voice can be preserved and re-constructed. Voice banking might help even in cases when there is no BSOD scenario involved.

Roger Ebert, noted film critic got his “natural” voice back, using such technology.

Hear Obama’s voice re-constructed: http://www.cereproc.com/en/products/voices

Full Body Performance Capture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feNxdWPSuWI

Without us even knowing it, we are Transhumans at heart. Owners of the gaming console Xbox and the Kinect, have at their disposal, hardware that until just a couple of years ago, was only within reach of large corporations and Hollywood studios. Motion Capture, Laser scanning, full body 3D models and performance capture was not accessible to lay-people.

Today, this technology can contribute toward backup and Digital resurrection. A performance capture session can encode digitally, the essence of a persons gait, the way they walk, pout, and express themselves — A person’s unique Digital Signature. The next video shows this.

“It was easy to create a frame for him, Dan,” he said. “In the time that the cancer was eating away at him, the day’s routine became more predictable.

At first he would still go to work, then come home and spend time with us. Then he couldn’t go anymore and he was at home all day.

I knew his routine so well it took me 15 minutes to feed it in. There was no need for any random branches.”

A performance capture file, could also be stored as part of a MindFile. LifeNaut and other cryonic service providers could benefit from such invaluable data when re-booting a person.

“And sometimes when we touch”:

Perhaps one of the most difficult of our senses to recreate, is that of touch. Science is already making giant strides in this area, and looking at it from a more human perspective, touch is one of the more direct and cherished sensations that defines humanity. Touch can convey emotion.

…That’s the point of this kind of technology – giving people their humanity back. You could argue that a person is no less of a human after losing a limb, but those who suffer through it would likely tell you that there is a feeling of loss. Getting that back may be physically gratifying, but it’s probably even more psychologically gratifying… — Nigel Ackland- on his bebionic arm.

If a person’s unique “touch” signature can be digitized, every nuance can be forever preserved…both for the benefit of the owner of the file, and to their loved ones, experiencing and remembering shared intimate moments.

Transhumanism, Eugenics and the Dirrogate Immigration Challenge

Clyde DeSouza — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:53:19 +0000

Transhumanism, Eugenics and IQ:

The aim of this short essay is not to delve into philosophy, yet on some level it is un-avoidable when talking about Transhumanism. An important goal of this movement is the use of technology for the enhancement, uplifting and perhaps…the transcendence of the shortcomings of the human condition. Technology in general seems to be keeping pace and is in sync with both Moore’s law and Kurzweil’s law and his predictions.

Yet, there is an emerging strain of Transhumanists — propelled by radical ideology, and if left un-questioned might raise the specter of Eugenics, wreaking havoc and potentially inviting retaliation from the masses. The outcome being, the stymieing human transcendence. One can only hope that along with physical augmentation technology and advances in bio-tech, Eugenics will be a thing of the past.

Soon enough, at least IQ Augmentation technology will be within reach (cost-wise) of the common man — in the form of an on-demand, non-invasive, memory and intelligence augmentation device. So… will Google Glass or similar Intelligence Augmentation device, forever banish the argument for “intellectual” Eugenics? Read an article on 4 ways that Google glass makes us Transhuman.

Technology without borders:

There is an essay on IEET titled: The Specter of Eugenics: IQ, White Supremacy, and Human Enhancement. It makes for interesting reading, including, the comments that follow it.

The following passage from the novel “Memories with Maya” is relevant to that essay.

He took a file out and opened it in front of us. Each paper was watermarked ‘Classified’.

“This is a proposal to regulate and govern the ownership of Dirrogates,” he said.

Krish and I looked at each other, and then we were listening.

“I see it, and I’m sure you both do as well, the immense opportunity there is in licensing Dirrogates to work overseas right at clients’ premises. BPO two point zero like you’ve never seen,” he said. “Our country is a huge business outsourcing destination. Why not have actual Dirrogates working at the client’s facility where they can communicate with other human staff. — Memories with Maya

A little explanation: Dirrogates are Digital Surrogates in the novel. An avatar of a real person, driven by markerless performance capture hardware such as a Kinect-like depth camera. Full skeletal and facial tracking animates a person’s Digital Surrogate and the Dirrogate can be seen by a human wearing Augmented Reality visors. Thus a human (the Dirrogate operator) is able to “tele-travel” to any location on Earth, given its exact geo-coordinates.

At the chosen destination, another depth cam streams a live, real-time 3D model of the room/location so the Dirrogate (operator) can “see” live humans overlaid with a 3D mesh of themselves and a fitted video draped texture map. In essence — a live person cloaked in a Computer generated mesh created in real-time by the depth camera… idea-seeding for Kinect 2 hackers.

What would a Dirrogate look like in the real-world? The video below, is a crude (non photo-realistic) Dirrogate entering the real world.

Dirrogates, Immigration and Pseudo Minduploads:

This brings up the question: If we can have Digital Surrogates, or indeed, pseudo mind-uploads taking on 3D printed mechanical-surrogate bodies, what is the future for physical borders and Immigration policies?

Which brings us to a related point: Does one need a visa to visit the United States of America to “work”?

As an analogy, consider the pseudo mind-upload in the video below.

Does it matter if the boy is in the same town that the school is in or if he were in another country? Now consider the case of a customer service executive, or an immigrant from a third world country using a pseudo mind-upload to Tele-Travel to his work place in down-town New York — to “drive” a Google Taxi Cab until such a time that driverless car AI is perfected.

Intimations of Imitations: Visions of Cellular Prosthesis & Functionally-Restorative Medicine

Franco Cortese — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:31:17 +0000

In this essay I argue that technologies and techniques used and developed in the fields of Synthetic Ion Channels and Ion Channel Reconstitution, which have emerged from the fields of supramolecular chemistry and bio-organic chemistry throughout the past 4 decades, can be applied towards the purpose of gradual cellular (and particularly neuronal) replacement to create a new interdisciplinary field that applies such techniques and technologies towards the goal of the indefinite functional restoration of cellular mechanisms and systems, as opposed to their current proposed use of aiding in the elucidation of cellular mechanisms and their underlying principles, and as biosensors.

In earlier essays (see here and here) I identified approaches to the synthesis of non-biological functional equivalents of neuronal components (i.e. ion-channels ion-pumps and membrane sections) and their sectional integration with the existing biological neuron — a sort of “physical” emulation if you will. It has only recently come to my attention that there is an existing field emerging from supramolecular and bio-organic chemistry centered around the design, synthesis, and incorporation/integration of both synthetic/artificial ion channels and artificial bilipid membranes (i.e. lipid bilayer). The potential uses for such channels commonly listed in the literature have nothing to do with life-extension however, and the field is to my knowledge yet to envision the use of replacing our existing neuronal components as they degrade (or before they are able to), rather seeing such uses as aiding in the elucidation of cellular operations and mechanisms and as biosensors. I argue here that the very technologies and techniques that constitute the field (Synthetic Ion-Channels & Ion-Channel/Membrane Reconstitution) can be used towards the purpose of the indefinite-longevity and life-extension through the iterative replacement of cellular constituents (particularly the components comprising our neurons – ion-channels, ion-pumps, sections of bi-lipid membrane, etc.) so as to negate the molecular degradation they would have otherwise eventually undergone.

While I envisioned an electro-mechanical-systems approach in my earlier essays, the field of Synthetic Ion-Channels from the start in the early 70’s applied a molecular approach to the problem of designing molecular systems that produce certain functions according to their chemical composition or structure. Note that this approach corresponds to (or can be categorized under) the passive-physicalist sub-approach of the physicalist-functionalist approach (the broad approach overlying all varieties of physically-embodied, “prosthetic” neuronal functional replication) identified in an earlier essay.

The field of synthetic ion channels is also referred to as ion-channel reconstitution, which designates “the solubilization of the membrane, the isolation of the channel protein from the other membrane constituents and the reintroduction of that protein into some form of artificial membrane system that facilitates the measurement of channel function,” and more broadly denotes “the [general] study of ion channel function and can be used to describe the incorporation of intact membrane vesicles, including the protein of interest, into artificial membrane systems that allow the properties of the channel to be investigated” [1]. The field has been active since the 1970s, with experimental successes in the incorporation of functioning synthetic ion channels into biological bilipid membranes and artificial membranes dissimilar in molecular composition and structure to biological analogues underlying supramolecular interactions, ion selectivity and permeability throughout the 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s. The relevant literature suggests that their proposed use has thus far been limited to the elucidation of ion-channel function and operation, the investigation of their functional and biophysical properties, and in lesser degree for the purpose of “in-vitro sensing devices to detect the presence of physiologically-active substances including antiseptics, antibiotics, neurotransmitters, and others” through the “… transduction of bioelectrical and biochemical events into measurable electrical signals” [2].

Thus my proposal of gradually integrating artificial ion-channels and/or artificial membrane sections for the purpse of indefinite longevity (that is, their use in replacing existing biological neurons towards the aim of gradual substrate replacement, or indeed even in the alternative use of constructing artificial neurons to, rather than replace existing biological neurons, become integrated with existing biological neural networks towards the aim of intelligence amplification and augmentation while assuming functional and experiential continuity with our existing biological nervous system) appears to be novel, while the notion of artificial ion-channels and neuronal membrane systems ion general had already been conceived (and successfully created/experimentally-verified, though presumably not integrated in-vivo).

The field of Functionally-Restorative Medicine (and the orphan sub-field of whole-brain-gradual-substrate-replacement, or “physically-embodied” brain-emulation if you like) can take advantage of the decades of experimental progress in this field, incorporating both the technological and methodological infrastructures used in and underlying the field of Ion-Channel Reconstitution and Synthetic/Artificial Ion Channels & Membrane-Systems (and the technologies and methodologies underlying their corresponding experimental-verification and incorporation techniques) for the purpose of indefinite functional restoration via the gradual and iterative replacement of neuronal components (including sections of bilipid membrane, ion channels and ion pumps) by MEMS (micro-electrocal-mechanical-systems) or more likely NEMS (nano-electro-mechanical systems).

The technological and methodological infrastructure underlying this field can be utilized for both the creation of artificial neurons and for the artificial synthesis of normative biological neurons. Much work in the field required artificially synthesizing cellular components (e.g. bilipid membranes) with structural and functional properties as similar to normative biological cells as possible, so that the alternative designs (i.e. dissimilar to the normal structural and functional modalities of biological cells or cellular components) and how they affect and elucidate cellular properties, could be effectively tested. The iterative replacement of either single neurons, or the sectional replacement of neurons with synthesized cellular components (including sections of the bi-lipid membrane, voltage-dependent ion-channels, ligand-dependent ion channels, ion pumps, etc.) is made possible by the large body of work already done in the field. Consequently the technological, methodological and experimental infrastructures developed for the fields of Synthetic

Ion-Channels and Ion-Channel/Artificial-Membrane-Reconstitution can be utilized for the purpose of a.) iterative replacement and cellular upkeep via biological analogues (or not differing significantly in structure or functional & operational modality to their normal biological counterparts) and/or b.) iterative replacement with non-biological analogues of alternate structural and/or functional modalities.

Rather than sensing when a given component degrades and then replacing it with an artificially-synthesized biological or non-biological analogue, it appears to be much more efficient to determine the projected time it takes for a given component to degrade or otherwise lose functionality, and simply automate the iterative replacement in this fashion, without providing in-vivo systems for detecting molecular or structural degradation. This would allow us to achieve both experimental and pragmatic success in such cellular-prosthesis sooner, because it doesn’t rely on the complex technological and methodological infrastructure underlying in-vivo sensing, especially on the scale of single neuron components like ion-channels, and without causing operational or functional distortion to the components being sensed.

A survey of progress in the field [3] lists several broad design motifs. I will first list the deign motifs falling within the scope of the survey, and the examples it provides. Selections from both papers are meant to show the depth and breadth of the field, rather than to elucidate the specific chemical or kinetic operations under the purview of each design-variety.

For a much more comprehensive, interactive bibliography of papers falling within the field of Synthetic Ion-Channels or constituting the historical foundations of the field, see Jon Chui’s online biography here, which charts the developments in this field up until 2011.

First Survey

Unimolecular ion channels:

Examples include a.) synthetic ion channels with oligocrown ionophores, [5] b.) using a-helical peptide scaffolds and rigid push–pull p-octiphenyl scaffolds for the recognition of polarized membranes, [6] and c.) modified varieties of the b-helical scaffold of gramicidin A [7]

Barrel-stave supramolecules:

Examples of this general class falling include avoltage-gated synthetic ion channels formed by macrocyclic bolaamphiphiles and rigidrod p-octiphenyl polyols [8].

Macrocyclic, branched and linear non-peptide bolaamphiphiles as staves:

Examples of this sub-class include synthetic ion channels formed by a.) macrocyclic, branched and linear bolaamphiphiles and dimeric steroids, [9] and by b.) non-peptide macrocycles, acyclic analogs and peptide macrocycles [respectively] containing abiotic amino acids [10].

Dimeric steroid staves:

Examples of this sub-class include channels using polydroxylated norcholentriol dimer [11].

pOligophenyls as staves in rigid rod b barrels:

Examples of this sub-class include “cylindrical self-assembly of rigid-rod b-barrel pores preorganized by the nonplanarity of p-octiphenyl staves in octapeptide-p-octiphenyl monomers” [12].

Synthetic Polymers:

Examples of this sub-class include synthetic ion channels and pores comprised of a.) polyalanine, b.) polyisocyanates, c.) polyacrylates, [13] formed by i.) ionophoric, ii.) ‘smart’ and iii.) cationic polymers [14]; d.) surface-attached poly(vinyl-n-alkylpyridinium) [15]; e.) cationic oligo-polymers [16] and f.) poly(m-phenylene ethylenes) [17].

Helical b-peptides (used as staves in barrel-stave method):

Examples of this class include: a.) cationic b-peptides with antibiotic activity, presumably acting as amphiphilic helices that form micellar pores in anionic bilayer membranes [18].

Monomeric steroids:

Examples of this sub-class falling include synthetic carriers, channels and pores formed by monomeric steroids [19], synthetic cationic steroid antibiotics [that] may act by forming micellar pores in anionic membranes [20], neutral steroids as anion carriers [21] and supramolecular ion channels [22].

Complex minimalist systems:

Examples of this sub-class falling within the scope of this survey include ‘minimalist’ amphiphiles as synthetic ion channels and pores [23], membrane-active ‘smart’ double-chain amphiphiles, expected to form ‘micellar pores’ or self-assemble into ion channels in response to acid or light [24], and double-chain amphiphiles that may form ‘micellar pores’ at the boundary between photopolymerized and host bilayer domains and representative peptide conjugates that may self assemble into supramolecular pores or exhibit antibiotic activity [25].

Non-peptide macrocycles as hoops:

Examples of this sub-class falling within the scope of this survey include synthetic ion channels formed by non-peptide macrocycles acyclic analogs [26] and peptide macrocycles containing abiotic amino acids [27].

Peptide macrocycles as hoops and staves:

Examples of this sub-class include a.) synthetic ion channels formed by self-assembly of macrocyclic peptides into genuine barrel-hoop motifs that mimic the b-helix of gramicidin A with cyclic b-sheets. The macrocycles are designed to bind on top of channels and cationic antibiotics (and several analogs) are proposed to form micellar pores in anionic membranes [28]; b.) synthetic carriers, antibiotics (and analogs) and pores (and analogs) formed by macrocyclic peptides with non-natural subunits. [Certain] macrocycles may act as b-sheets, possibly as staves of b-barrel-like pores [29]; c.) bioengineered pores as sensors. Covalent capturing and fragmentations [have been] observed on the single-molecule level within engineered a-hemolysin pore containing an internal reactive thiol [30].

Summary

Thus even without knowledge of supramolecular or organic chemistry, one can see that a variety of alternate approaches to the creation of synthetic ion channels, and several sub-approaches within each larger ‘design motif’ or broad-approach, not only exist but have been experimentally verified, varietized and refined.

Second Survey

The following selections [31] illustrate the chemical, structural and functional varieties of synthetic ions categorized according to whether they are cation-conducting or anion-conducting, respectively. These examples are used to further emphasize the extent of the field, and the number of alternative approaches to synthetic ion-channel design, implementation, integration and experimental-verification already existent. Permission to use all the following selections and figures were obtained from the author of the source.

There are 6 classical design-motifs for synthetic ion-channels, categorized by structure, that are identified within the paper:

A: unimolecular macromolecules,
B: complex barrel-stave,
C: barrel-rosette,
D: barrel hoop, and
E: micellar supramolecules.

Cation Conducting Channels:

UNIMOLECULAR

“The first non-peptidic artificial ion channel was reported by Kobuke et al. in 1992” [33].

“The channel contained “an amphiphilic ion pair consisting of oligoether-carboxylates and mono- (or di-) octadecylammoniumcations. The carboxylates formed the channel core and the cations formed the hydrophobic outer wall, which was embedded in the bilipid membrane with a channel length of about 24 to 30 Å. The resultant ion channel, formed from molecular self-assembly, is cation selective and voltage-dependent” [34].

“Later, Kokube et al. synthesized another channel comprising of resorcinol based cyclic tetramer as the building block. The resorcin-[4]-arenemonomer consisted of four long alkyl chains which aggregated to forma dimeric supramolecular structure resembling that of Gramicidin A” [35]. “Gokel et al. had studied [a set of] simple yet fully functional ion channels known as “hydraphiles” [39].

“An example (channel 3) is shown in Figure 1.6, consisting of diaza-18-crown-6 crown ether groups and alkyl chain as side arms and spacers. Channel 3 is capable of transporting protons across the bilayer membrane” [40].

“A covalently bonded macrotetracycle4 (Figure 1.8) had shown to be about three times more active than Gokel’s ‘hydraphile’ channel, and its amide-containing analogue also showed enhanced activity” [44].

“Inorganic derivative using crown ethers have also been synthesized. Hall et. al synthesized an ion channel consisting of a ferrocene and 4 diaza-18-crown-6 linked by 2 dodecyl chains (Figure 1.9). The ion channel was redox-active as oxidation of the ferrocene caused the compound to switch to an inactive form” [45]

B STAVES:

“These are more difficult to synthesize [in comparison to unimolecular varieties] because the channel formation usually involves self-assembly via non-covalent interactions” [47].“A cyclic peptide composed of even number of alternating D- and L-amino acids (Figure 1.10) was suggested to form barrel-hoop structure through backbone-backbone hydrogen bonds by De Santis” [49].

“A tubular nanotube synthesized by Ghadiri et al. consisting of cyclic D and L peptide subunits form a flat, ring-shaped conformation that stack through an extensive anti-parallel β-sheet-like hydrogen bonding interaction (Figure 1.11)” [51].

“Experimental results have shown that the channel can transport sodium and potassium ions. The channel can also be constructed by the use of direct covalent bonding between the sheets so as to increase the thermodynamic and kinetic stability” [52].

“By attaching peptides to the octiphenyl scaffold, a β-barrel can be formed via self-assembly through the formation of β-sheet structures between the peptide chains (Figure 1.13)” [53].

“The same scaffold was used by Matile etal. to mimic the structure of macrolide antibiotic amphotericin B. The channel synthesized was shown to transport cations across the membrane” [54].

“Attaching the electron-poor naphthalenediimide (NDIs) to the same octiphenyl scaffold led to the hoop-stave mismatch during self-assembly that results in a twisted and closed channel conformation (Figure 1.14). Adding the compleentary dialkoxynaphthalene (DAN) donor led to the cooperative interactions between NDI and DAN that favors the formation of barrel-stave ion channel.” [57].

MICELLAR

“These aggregate channels are formed by amphotericin involving both sterols and antibiotics arranged in two half-channel sections within the membrane” [58].

“An active form of the compound is the bolaamphiphiles (two-headed amphiphiles). (Figure 1.15) shows an example that forms an active channel structure through dimerization or trimerization within the bilayer membrane. Electrochemical studies had shown that the monomer is inactive and the active form involves dimer or larger aggregates” [60].

ANION CONDUCTING CHANNELS:

“A highly active, anion selective, monomeric cyclodextrin-based ion channel was designed by Madhavan et al (Figure 1.16). Oligoether chains were attached to the primary face of the β-cyclodextrin head group via amide bonds. The hydrophobic oligoether chains were chosen because they are long enough to span the entire lipid bilayer. The channel was able to select “anions over cations” and “discriminate among halide anions in the order I-> Br-> Cl- (following Hofmeister series)” [61].

“The anion selectivity occurred via the ring of ammonium cations being positioned just beside the cyclodextrin head group, which helped to facilitate anion selectivity. Iodide ions were transported the fastest because the activation barrier to enter the hydrophobic channel core is lower for I- compared to either Br- or Cl-“ [62]. “A more specific artificial anion selective ion channel was the chloride selective ion channel synthesized by Gokel. The building block involved a heptapeptide with Proline incorporated (Figure 1.17)” [63].

Cellular Prosthesis: Inklings of a New Interdisciplinary Approach

The paper cites “nanoreactors for catalysis and chemical or biological sensors” and “interdisciplinary uses as nano –filtration membrane, drug or gene delivery vehicles/transporters as well as channel-based antibiotics that may kill bacterial cells preferentially over mammalian cells” as some of the main applications of synthetic ion-channels [65], other than their normative use in elucidating cellular function and operation.

However, I argue that a whole interdisciplinary field and heretofore-unrecognized new approach or sub-field of Functionally-Restorative Medicine is possible through taking the technologies and techniques involved in in constructing, integrating, and experimentally-verifying either a.) non-biological analogues of ion-channels & ion-pumps (thus trans-membrane membrane proteins in general, also sometimes referred to as transport proteins or integral membrane proteins) and membranes (which include normative bilipid membranes, non-lipid membranes and chemically-augmented bilipid membranes), and b.) the artificial synthesis of biological analogues of ion-channels, ion-pumps and membranes, which are structurally and chemically equivalent to naturally-occurring biological components but which are synthesized artificially – and applying such technologies and techniques toward the purpose the gradual replacement of our existing biological neurons constituting our nervous systems – or at least those neuron-populations that comprise the neo- and prefrontal-cortex, and through iterative procedures of gradual replacement thereby achieving indefinite-longevity. There is still work to be done in determining the comparative advantages and disadvantages of various structural and functional (i.e. design) motifs, and in the logistics of implanting the iterative replacement or reconstitution of ion-channels, ion-pumps and sections of neuronal membrane in-vivo.

The conceptual schemes outlined in Concepts for Functional Replication of Biological Neurons [66], Gradual Neuron Replacement for the Preservation of Subjective-Continuity [67] and Wireless Synapses, Artificial Plasticity, and Neuromodulation [68] would constitute variations on the basic approach underlying this proposed, embryonic interdisciplinary field. Certain approaches within the fields of nanomedicine itself, particularly those approaches that constitute the functional emulation of existing cell-types, such as but not limited to Robert Freitas’s conceptual designs for the functional emulation of the red blood cell (a.k.a. erythrocytes, haematids) [69], i.e. the Resperocyte, itself should be seen as falling under the purview of this new approach, although not all approaches to Nanomedicine (diagnostics, drug-delivery and neuroelectronic interfacing) constitute the physical (i.e. electromechanical, kinetic and/or molecular physically-embodied) and functional emulation of biological cells.

The field of functionally-restorative medicine in general (and of nanomedicine in particular) and the field of supramolecular and organic chemistry converge here, where these technological, methodological, and experimental infrastructures developed in field of Synthetic Ion-Channels and Ion Channel Reconstitution can be employed to develop a new interdisciplinary approach that applies the logic of prosthesis to the cellular and cellular-component (i.e. sub-cellular) scale; same tools, new use. These techniques could be used to iteratively replace the components of our neurons as they degrade, or to replace them with more robust systems that are less susceptible to molecular degradation. Instead of repairing the cellular DNA, RNA and protein transcription and synthesis machinery, we bypass it completely by configuring and integrating the neuronal components (ion-channels, ion-pumps and sections of bilipid membrane) directly.

Thus I suggest that theoreticians of nanomedicine look to the large quantity of literature already developed in the emerging fields of synthetic ion-channels and membrane-reconstitution, towards the objective of adapting and applying existing technologies and methodologies to the new purpose of iterative maintenance, upkeep and/or replacement of cellular (and particularly neuronal) constituents with either non-biological analogues or artificially-synthesized-but-chemically/structurally-equivalent biological analogues.

This new sub-field of Synthetic Biology needs a name to differentiate it from the other approaches to Functionally-Restorative Medicine. I suggest the designation ‘cellular prosthesis’.

References:

[1] Williams (1994)., An introduction to the methods available for ion channel reconstitution. in D.C Ogden Microelectrode techniques, The Plymouth workshop edition, CambridgeCompany of Biologists.

[2] Tomich, J., Montal, M. (1996). U.S Patent No. 5,16,890. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

[3] Matile, S., Som, A., & Sorde, N. (2004). Recent synthetic ion channels and pores. Tetrahedron, 60(31), 6405–6435. ISSN 0040–4020, 10.1016/j.tet.2004.05.052. Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040402004007690:

[4] XIAO, F., (2009). Synthesis and structural investigations of pyridine-based aromatic foldamers.

[5] Ibid., p. 6411.

[6] Ibid., p. 6416.

[7] Ibid., p. 6413.

[8] Ibid., p. 6412.

[9] Ibid., p. 6414.

[10] Ibid., p. 6425.

[11] Ibid., p. 6427.

[12] Ibid., p. 6416.

[13] Ibid., p. 6419.

[14] Ibid., p. 6419.

[15] Ibid., p. 6419.

[16] Ibid., p. 6419.

[17] Ibid., p. 6419.

[18] Ibid., p. 6421.

[19] Ibid., p. 6422.

[20] Ibid., p. 6422.

[21] Ibid., p. 6422.

[22] Ibid., p. 6422.

[23] Ibid., p. 6423.

[24] Ibid., p. 6423.

[25] Ibid., p. 6423.

[26] Ibid., p. 6426.

[27] Ibid., p. 6426.

[28] Ibid., p. 6427.

[29] Ibid., p. 6327.

[30] Ibid., p. 6427.

[31] XIAO, F. (2009). Synthesis and structural investigations of pyridine-based aromatic foldamers.

[32] Ibid., p. 4.

[33] Ibid., p. 4.

[34] Ibid., p. 4.

[35] Ibid., p. 4.

[36] Ibid., p. 7.

[37] Ibid., p. 8.

[38] Ibid., p. 7.

[39] Ibid., p. 7.

[40] Ibid., p. 7.

[41] Ibid., p. 7.

[42] Ibid., p. 7.

[43] Ibid., p. 8.

[44] Ibid., p. 8.

[45] Ibid., p. 9.

[46] Ibid., p. 9.

[47] Ibid., p. 9.

[48] Ibid., p. 10.

[49] Ibid., p. 10.

[50] Ibid., p. 10.

[51] Ibid., p. 10.

[52] Ibid., p. 11.

[53] Ibid., p. 12.

[54] Ibid., p. 12.

[55] Ibid., p. 12.

[56] Ibid., p. 12.

[57] Ibid., p. 12.

[58] Ibid., p. 13.

[59] Ibid., p. 13.

[60] Ibid., p. 14.

[61] Ibid., p. 14.

[62] Ibid., p. 14.

[63] Ibid., p. 15.

[64] Ibid., p. 15.

[65] Ibid., p. 15.

[66] Cortese, F., (2013). Concepts for Functional Replication of Biological Neurons. The Rational Argumentator. Access: http://www.rationalargumentator.com/index/blog/2013/05/conce…plication/

[67] Cortese, F., (2013). Gradual Neuron Replacement for the Preservation of Subjective-Continuity. The Rational Argumentator. Access: http://www.rationalargumentator.com/index/blog/2013/05/gradu…placement/

[68] Cortese, F., (2013). Wireless Synapses, Artificial Plasticity, and Neuromodulation. The Rational Argumentator. Access: http://www.rationalargumentator.com/index/blog/2013/05/wireless-synapses/

[69] Freitas Jr., R., (1998). “Exploratory Design in Medical Nanotechnology: A Mechanical Artificial Red Cell”. Artificial Cells, Blood Substitutes, and Immobil. Biotech. (26): 411–430. Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9663339

Methuselah Foundation Just Donated $5,000 to L. Stephen Coles Fundraiser — Please Support This Campaign To Save A Life

Franco Cortese — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 04:40:02 +0000

UPDATE: A generous contribution of $5,000 from the Methuselah Foundation has been received! This will put the fundraiser over the top of the cost and pay for the advanced Champions Oncology treatment described below.

However, Dr. Coles still has other medical expenses outstanding, and more will be coming in.

To cover these as well as Dr. Coles’s many other personal expenses, the fundraiser will now have an extended timeframe and the limit has been raised to $20,000.

We are currently at $13,385 of our 20,000 goal! Help us make it all the way!

Your contribution would help Dr. Coles continue his contributions and be greatly appreciated.

*** PLEASE alert your friends. L Stephen Coles spend his entire professional career trying to save your life; take a second to help save his.***

CLICK HERE TO DONATE, OR TO HELP BY LIKING AND SHARING THE PAGE VIA FACEBOOK, TWITTER, GOOGLE+ OR PINTEREST.

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Stephen Coles is one of the heroes of our time, who has contributed immensely to the prospects for longevity for all of us. I am honored to be able to assist him in his own struggle against a life-threatening illness, so that he could have decades and centuries more to fight the most dangerous, the most destructive enemies of senescence and death.Anonymous

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Get well !

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PLEASE donate ANYTHING you can to help save the life of L. Stephen Coles, who has spent his entire professional career trying to save yours!

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prayers are on the way for more than 65% of deaths. Aging is a cause of adult cancer, stroke and many others age related diseases. Researchers fighting aging are the best people, they are fighting for all of us. Let’s pay them back!

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Steve, win this fight for us all. I send you healing thoughts.

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Steve, friends and family, but it is an outstanding, real-world example of the advancing frontier of science and medicine. The entire life-extension community should rally in support of this effort for Steve and for the acquisition of important scientific knowledge.

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The Impending Crisis of Data: Do We Need a Constitution of Information?

Emanuel Yi Pastreich — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:38:16 +0000

The recent scandal involving the surveillance of the Associated Press and Fox News by the United States Justice Department has focused attention on the erosion of privacy and freedom of speech in recent years. But before we simply attribute these events to the ethical failings of Attorney General Eric Holder and his staff, we also should consider the technological revolution powering this incident, and thousands like it. It would appear that bureaucrats simply are seduced by the ease with which information can be gathered and manipulated. At the rate that technologies for the collection and fabrication of information are evolving, what is now available to law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the United States, and around the world, will soon be available to individuals and small groups.

We must come to terms with the current information revolution and take the first steps to form global institutions that will assure that our society, and our governments, can continue to function through this chaotic and disconcerting period. The exponential increase in the power of computers will mean that changes the go far beyond the limits of slow-moving human government. We will need to build new institutions to the crisis that are substantial and long-term. It will not be a matter that can be solved by adding a new division to Homeland Security or Google.

We do not have any choice. To make light of the crisis means allowing shadowy organizations to usurp for themselves immense power through the collection and distortion of information. Failure to keep up with technological change in an institutional sense will mean that in the future government will be at best a symbolic façade of authority with little authority or capacity to respond to the threats of information manipulation. In the worst case scenario, corporations and government agencies could degenerate into warring factions, a new form of feudalism in which invisible forces use their control of information to wage murky wars for global domination.

No degree of moral propriety among public servants, or corporate leaders, can stop the explosion of spying and the propagation of false information that we will witness over the next decade. The most significant factor behind this development will be Moore’s Law which stipulates that the number of microprocessors that can be placed economically on a chip will double every 18 months (and the cost of storage has halved every 14 months) — and not the moral decline of citizens. This exponential increase in our capability to gather, store, share, alter and fabricate information of every form will offer tremendous opportunities for the development of new technologies. But the rate of change of computational power is so much faster than the rate at which human institutions can adapt — let alone the rate at which the human species evolves — that we will face devastating existential challenges to human civilization.

The Challenges we face as a result of the Information Revolution

The dropping cost of computational power means that individuals can gather gigantic amounts of information and integrate it into meaningful intelligence about thousands, or millions, of individuals with minimal investment. The ease of extracting personal information from garbage, recordings of people walking up and down the street, taking aerial photographs and combining then with other seemingly worthless material and then organizing it in a meaningful manner will increase dramatically. Facial recognition, speech recognition and instantaneous speech to text will become literally child’s play. Inexpensive, and tiny, surveillance drones will be readily available to collect information on people 24/7 for analysis. My son recently received a helicopter drone with a camera as a present that cost less than $40. In a few years elaborate tracking of the activities of thousands, or millions, of people will become literally child’s play.

At the same time, increasing powerful technology will make the fabrication of texts, images, and, increasingly, videos and sounds easy. We can see already in the latest generation of virtual reality sophisticated forms of mimetic representation that promise to be indistinguishable from reality in the near future. The drastic drop in the cost of computation will make it possible to create elaborate histories for virtual events, and biographies for virtual people, that will make those realities entirely convincing. Once a virtual person has forty years of complex memories and records (from credit records to medical records and diaries), the challenge of distinguishing him from an actual individual will be difficult. In addition, as virtual reality merges with social networks, the chaos will be extreme. Facebook friends may end up being partially, and then primarily, avatars controlled by supercomputer networks without the individual being aware.

The impact of the information revolution does not stop there. The use and misuse of DNA material in genetically modified organisms, or for other applications, is becoming exponentially cheaper. Whereas a single human genome was once prohibitively expensive, the cost of sequencing is falling at a rate far faster than Moore’s Law.

As the cost approaches zero for sequencing, Professor John Burn of Newcastle University is one of a growing number who advocate for creating genomes for every single human on earth. Doing so will be easy in five years or less, and the benefits could be tremendous. But imagine an age in which one’s DNA can be picked up off of a glass and duplicated into clones, or combined with other DNA to form payloads for viruses, or employed to manufacture off-the-shelf organs, there will be a desperate need for a set of rules and regulations on the collection and use of genetic information.

There are a host of other threats on the horizon that call out for some international system of regulation and control beyond simple market forces and gentleman’s agreements. Some can be predicted, others we can only speculate about. For example, we will face serious challenges when it comes to the function of money as it becomes entirely digitalized and its value is subject to imperceptible manipulations and alterations on a global scale. So also the rise of micro-drones beyond the control of even governments that can spy and wage invisible wars will require new institutions to contain them. For that matter, the next generation of 3D printing not only promises breakthroughs such as organ fabrication and the synthesis of edible hydroponic meat tissues, but also threatens to make possible the unlicensed production of weapons according to designs. These developments will require new legal and ethical structures before they can be adequately addressed.

The Constitution of Information

I propose that the first step in responding to the information crisis is the drafting of a global “Constitution of Information” that sets down concrete rules concerning the use of information and the maintenance of accuracy of information, thereby establishing a reliable system that is founded on a strong set of checks and balances to make sure that attempts to control information does not lead to even greater abuses.

Although the gathering and manipulation of information has become a major issue, the existing national constitutions on which we base our laws and our governance (in the United States or elsewhere) have little to say about this problem. Moreover, many of us have trouble grasping the seriousness of the information crisis: it remains largely invisible because it alters the very means by which we perceive the world.

We need to hold an international constitutional convention in which we can draft a binding global “constitution of information” that will address the consequences of the information revolution. It would be meaningless simply to propose a text for a constitution at this point because a living constitution is not a written text but rather an institution created through a series of negotiations and compromises. At this point we can only identify the need and the general issues that must be addressed within such a constitution and by institutions created by that convention.

Those who object to such a constitution of information as a dangerous form of centralized authority that will encourage abuse are not fully aware of the problems we already face. The abuse of information has already reached epic proportions and we are just at the doorstep of exponential increases.

In his dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell foresaw the dangers of a centralized clearinghouse for official propaganda named “The Ministry of Truth” in which the imperative to promote veracity is perverted into a factory for manufacturing fiction in the tradition of Stalin. The dangers of such a distortion of any attempt to rectify the tremendous amount of disinformation and misinformation in circulation should be foremost in our minds.

We are proposing a system that will bring accountability and institutional transparency to the institutions that are already engaged in the control, collection, and alternation of information. The point is to give an ethical imperative and a vision for the future. Failure to establish institutions like this constitution of information will not assure preservation of an Arcadian utopia, but rather will encourage the emergence of even greater fields of information collection and manipulation that are entirely beyond the purview of any institution. The result will be increasing manipulation of human society by shadowy and invisible forces for which no set of regulations has been established.

One essential assumption behind the constitution of information should be, following David Brin’s argument in his book The Transparent Society (1998) that privacy will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to protect in the future in light of technological evolution. We must accept, paradoxically, that information must be made part of the public commons in order to preserve its integrity and its privacy. That is to say that simply protecting privacy will not be sufficient granted the overwhelming development of new technologies for gathering and altering information that will emerge in the years ahead.

Within a future constitution of information, and the institutions that it proposes, there must be a complex separation of powers wherein information is monitored, and its abuses controlled, or punished, according to a meticulous, painfully negotiated, agreement that follows the principles of transparency, accountability and the maintenance of a commons for the benefit of ordinary people. Information could be governed by three branches of government, something like the legislative, executive, and judicial systems that have served well in constitution-based governments following the proposals of Montesquieu for a tripartite system. The branches could be assigned different tasks and authorities within this system for monitoring information. The branches within government of information would have built into their mandates competing interests that would motivate them to limit the power of the other branches. Currently, there is little such balance of power within the global intelligence community or the large IT companies that have such influence globally.

For this reason, I suggest that as part of the three branches of government, a “three keys” system for the management of information be adopted. That is to say that sensitive information will be accessible — otherwise we cannot assure that information will be accurate — but that the information can only be accessed when the three keys are present that represent the three branches of the system. That process would assure that accountability can be maintained because three institutions whose interests are not necessarily aligned must be present to access that information.

The need to both assure privacy and to insure accuracy and reliability will require complex institutional changes and reinterpretations of the constitutional systems that exist already. But as we are already entering into a “post-constitutional” age in countries like the United States, it is imperative that we reaffirm the value of such public contracts so that to keep them from becoming mere ornaments.

The challenges of maintaining a balanced and reliable ecosystem for information cannot be dictated in a single article, but we can set the goal and start to bring together both practitioner and visionaries to put forth a direction and an encapsulation of the central tenets for a system based on transparency and accountability.

(based on article originally featured in The Hankyoreh, June 3, 2013)

Recreating Heaven and Earth…in real-time.

Clyde DeSouza — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:25:32 +0000

Prologue:

‘Let there be light,’ said the Cgi-God, and there was light…and God Rays.

We were out in the desert; barren land, and our wish was that it be transformed into a green oasis; a tropical paradise.

And so our demigods went to work in their digital sand-boxes.
Then, one of the Cgi-Gods populated the land with Dirrogates –Digital people in her own likeness.

Welcome to the world… created in Real-time.

A whole generation of people are growing up in such virtual worlds, accustomed to travelling across miles and miles of photo-realistic terrain on their gaming rigs. An entire generation of Transhumans evolving (perhaps even un-known to them). With each passing year, hardware and software under the command of human intelligence, gets even closer to simulating the real-world, down to physics, caustics and other phenomena exclusive to the planet Earth. How is all this voodoo being done?

Enter –the Game Engine.

Watch this video on YouTube.

All output in the video above is in real-time and from a single modern gaming PC. That’s right…in case you missed it, all of the visuals were generated in real-time from a single PC that can sit on a desk. The “engine” behind it, is the CryEngine 3. A far more customized and amped up version of this technology called Cinebox is a dedicated offering aimed at Cinematography. It will have tools and functions that film makers are familiar with. It is these advances in technology… these tools that film-makers will use, that will acclimatize us to the virtual world they build with human performance capture and digital assets; laser scanned pointclouds of real-world architecture… this is the technology that will play its part and segue us into Transhumanism, rather than a radical crusade that will “convert” humanity to the movement.

Mind Uploads need a World to roam in:

Laser scanned buildings and even whole neighborhood blocks are now common place in large budget Hollywood productions. A detailed point cloud needs massive compute power to render. Highend Game Engines when daisy chained can render and simulate these large neighborhoods with realtime animated atmosphere, and populate the land with photo-realistic flora and fauna. Lest we forget… in stereoscopic 3D, for full immersion of our visual cortex.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Real World Synced Weather:

Game Engines have powerful and advanced TOD (time of day) editors. Now imagine if a TOD editor module and a weather system could pull data such as wind direction, temperature and weather conditions from real-world sensors, or a real-time data source.

If this could be done, then the augmented world running on the Game Engine could have details such as leaves blowing in the correct direction. See the video above at around the 0.42 seconds mark for a feeler of what I’m aiming for.

Also: The stars would all align and there would be no possible errors in the night sky, of the virtual with the real, though there would be nothing stopping “God” from introducing a blue moon in the sky.

At around the 0:20 second mark, the video above shows one of the “Demi-Gods” at work: populating Virtual Earth with exotic trees and forests… mind-candy to keep an uploaded mind from home-sickness. As Transhumans, either as full mind uploads or as augmented humans with bio-mechanical enhancements or indeed, even as naturals, it is expected that we will augment the real world with our dreams of a tropical paradise — Heaven, can indeed be a place on Earth.

Epilogue:

We were tired of our mundane lives in an un-augmented biosphere. As Transhumans, some of us booted up our mind-uploads while yet others ventured out into the desert of the real world in temperature regulated nano-clothing, experiencing a tropical paradise… even as the “naturals” would deny it’s very existence.

Recently, scientists have said we may really be living in a simulation after all. The Mayans stopped counting time not because they predicted Winter Solstice 2012 would be the end of the world… but it might be because they saw 2013 heralding the dawn of a new era. An era that sees the building blocks come into place for a journey heading into eventual…‘Singularity’

Dir·ro·gate : A portmanteau of Digital + Surrogate. Borrowed from the novel “Memories with Maya“
Authors note: All images, videos and products mentioned are copyright to their respective owners and brands and there is no implied connection between the brands and Transhumanism.

Stephen L. Coles is DYING and NEEDS your Help!

Franco Cortese — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:20:04 +0000

*** PLEASE alert your friends—Our own continued health and longevity may depend on Steve continuing his work.***

This call for support was also posted by Ilia Stambler on the Longevity Alliance Website, and organized on YouCaring.com by John M. Adams. Eric Schulke has also helped tremendously in spreading the word about the Fundraiser.

Since founding the Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group in 1990, Dr. L. Stephen Coles M.D., Ph.D., has worked tirelessly to develop new ways to slow and ultimately reverse human aging.

Everyone active in the LA-GRG or the Worldwide GRG Discussion Group have benefited from his expertise. His continual reporting of news about the latest developments to the List and his work in areas such as gathering blood samples for a complete genome analysis of the oldest people in the world (supercentenarians, aged 110+) is ground breaking and far ahead of anything that has ever been accomplished before. Publication of this work is expected in collaboration with Stanford University before the end of the year. Other accomplishments are equally notable

CLICK HERE TO HELP!

BRIEF summary of his work: L. Stephen Coles, M.D. Ph.D — Cited in more than 250 scientific articles — Profiled as notable person in Wikipedia — Many other contributions to aging research and advancing long, healthy life

Steve Coles was diagnosed with Adenocarcinoma (Pancreatic Cancer) at the head of the pancreas on Christmas Eve of last year. Pancreatic cancer is particularly insidious. He underwent a Whipple (Surgical) Procedure on January 3rd that produced a beneficial result. The tumor’s complete obstruction to the common bile duct that had caused jaundice and severe pruritus (skin itching leading to scratching to the point of bleeding) was almost immediately reversed in two days. His subsequent chemotherapy with Gemzar over the past three months will hopefully prevent metastases from spreading to other organs. But we won’t know his prognosis until June 7th when a CT Scan will be compared with a baseline scan performed before the start of chemo interpreted by a cancer radiologist.

We now have the opportunity to carry out a personalized chemo treatment regimen created by a start-up company called Champions Oncology in Baltimore, MD; USA affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Champions is a world class organization that will analyze the tissue sample that has already been sent to them. Then, a custom treatment program will be prescribed for Steve based on a mouse model, since each tumor is unique and pure test tube trials have not been shown to be effective.

Champions Oncology’s service is to test in mice what can work for Dr. Coles. This is done through two steps:

(1) To implant Dr. Coles’s cancer on mice. (This part has been successfully carried out, and it will allow us to test nine different treatment protocols on Dr. Coles’s specific tumor tissue in mice).

(2) Test the treatments on the mice (The treatments have been defined with Dr. James P. Watson, Dr. Coles, and his oncologists.)

Dr. Joao Pedro de Magalhes of Liverpool, UK was the first to propose employing the services of Champions Oncology. They have a good track record. The biggest risk is that the process normally takes so long that the patient dies before the results can be obtained (especially with such an aggressive, malignant cancer, as Dr. Coles’s). Luckily, this part went right. Also, there is a risk is that Step-1 won’t work. Luckily for us, this part went right, too. Therefore, so far, it seems that choosing Champions Oncology’s approach was the right choice. We can’t be sure that Step-2 will be as successful, but we need to try.

In addition to his medical team here in the U.S., our international friends have been active on his behalf. They successfully negotiated a 60 percent reduction in cost.

NOW, YOU CAN HELP IN TWO WAYS:

(1) CONTRIBUTE TO THIS FUND

Time is of the essence. The good people at Champions Oncology have agreed to begin the analysis immediately.

Steve Coles needs your support.

It may make THE difference. Please dig deep and support him by contributing to the fund.

*** Our own continued health and longevity may depend on Steve continuing his work.***

(2) SEND REFERRALS TO CHAMPIONS ONCOLOGY

Champions Oncology is an early-stage for-profit company. Champions is not a philanthropy. Like many companies offering breakthrough technologies, it has light bills to pay, payroll to make on time, and many other typical expenses.

Please think of any oncologists how may refer patients to Champions, then contact any of the individuals listed below so we may get life-saving information about Champions into their hands. Champions is particularly well set up to accommodate physicians and patients in the Eastern U.S., Germany, France, Brazil, and Japan.

We wish to acknowledge the GRG (the Gerontology Research Group—A discussion group of ~400 members worldwide.

We owe a special thank you to The International Longevity Alliance Movement for their support.

Contacts:

1. Edouard Debonneuil [email protected] France Skype ID: edebonneuil

2. Daniel Wuttke [email protected] Germany Skype: admiral_atlan

3. Ilia Stambler [email protected] Israel Skype: iliastam

4. John M. (Johnny) Adams [email protected]

U.S. (949) 922‑9786 Skype: agingintervention

Updates 06/03/2013

by John M. (Johnny) Adams

IMPORTANT MESSAGE: Dr. Coles has received a contribution and is forwarding it directly to Champions Oncology.

So as of now, 10:20 am PDT, we have $6175 of the needed $10,000!

I have contacted YouCaring and asked how to change the “$1475 raised of $10000 goal”.

Supporters

Franco Cortese

donated$100.00

Monday, June 03, 2013

PLEASE donate ANYTHING you can to help save the life of L. Stephen Coles, who has spent his entire professional career trying to save yours!

Aubrey de Grey

donated$300.00

Monday, June 03, 2013

Anonymous

Offline Donation

donated$5,000.00

Monday, June 03, 2013

RetirementSingularity.com

donated Hidden Amount

Monday, June 03, 2013

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donated Hidden Amount

Monday, June 03, 2013

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donated$15.00

Monday, June 03, 2013

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kg goldberger

donated$20.00

Sunday, June 02, 2013

Bijan Pourat MD

donated$250.00

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Maxim Kholin

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Saturday, June 01, 2013

Aging is a disease. Aging is responsible

Anonymous

donated$60.00

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Nils Alexander Hizukuri

donated$30.00

Saturday, June 01, 2013

All the best!

Anonymous

donated$40.00

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Danny Bobrow

donated Hidden Amount

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Steve, win this fight for us all. I send you healing thoughts.

Danny Steve, friends and family, but it is an outstanding, real-world example of the advancing frontier of science and medicine. The entire life-extension community should rally in support of this effort for Steve and for the acquisition of important scientific knowledge.

Cliff Hague

donated $100.00

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Tom Coote

donated $100.00

Friday, May 31, 2013

With Best Wishes!

Anonymous

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Allen Taylor

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TeloMe Inc.

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Friday, May 31, 2013

Not only is this an important cause for

-Preston Estep, Ph.D.

CEO and Chief Scientific Officer, TeloMe, Inc.

Anonymous

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Larry Abrams

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