ANSWER: Absolutely used by actuaries and some futurists, actuarial sciences are structurally linear and incomplete in a world mired by explosive nonlinearity, fluidly and incessantly.
This archive file was compiled from an interview conducted at the SENS Research Foundation in Mountain View, California, February 2013.
About Dr. Aubrey de Grey: The first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, decided in the 200s BC not to die, and assembled China’s best thinkers and searchers to solve the problem of death. Things did not work out for him. As of the early 21st century, historical efforts at reliable health in old age displayed a reliable pattern of failure. While the eventual crystallization of the scientific method and resulting technology had greatly improved many people’s life expectancy, the longest possible lifespan of an individual had proved to be a much more stubborn thing. Dr. Aubrey de Grey shot to controversial prominence in the 2000s, proposing that for the first time in history, developments in a wide variety of fields made it plausible to advocate for health technology which would significantly tackle age-related disease — possibly allowing the old to live with a higher quality of life and the same low ‘risk of death’ as the young.
This archive file was compiled from audio and video documentation of a gathering of medical professionals, inventors & entrepreneurs, held at Singularity University in California, February 2013. The selected material gives a portrait of a time in which the field of health found itself at a crossroads between the mature medical institutions which had slowly evolved over hundreds of years, and a need to develop and integrate new, more flexible and scalable forms of care. About Future Med: http://futuremed2020.com/ About Singularity University: http://singularityu.org/ GPA on Facebook: on.fb.me/18NiF8z GPA on Twitter: twitter.com/GPA2030
This archive file was compiled from audio of a discussion futurist FM 2030 held at the University of California, February 6th, 1994. In this discussion 2030 laid out an overview of his ‘transhuman’ philosophy and held a back and forth with other people present in the discussion. Discussion and debate included items such as the value of researching ‘indefinite lifespan’ technologies directly as opposed to (or in addition to) more traditional approaches, such as researching cures for specific diseases. The excerpts in this archive file present a sort of thesis of FM 2030’s transhuman ideas.
About FM 2030: FM 2030 was at various points in his life, an Iranian Olympic basketball player, a diplomat, a university teacher, and a corporate consultant. He developed his views on transhumanism in the 1960s and evolved them over the next thirty-something years. He was placed in cryonic suspension July 8th, 2000. For more information about FM 2030, view the GPA Archive File: ‘Introduction to FM 2030′ or visit some of the following links:
“You get what you celebrate.” In 1989 Dean Kamen created FIRST Robotics to change the culture from one that idolizes entertainment celebrities and sports stars to one that celebrates scientists, engineers and visionaries. Over 20 years later, how much has changed?
This archive file was compiled from an interview conducted on the campus of Singularity University, February 2013. The interview took place at a time where new artificial intelligence systems, such as IBM’s Jeopardy winning “Watson,” were re-awakening the popular imagination in terms of artificial intelligence becoming a visible part of day to day life. The privacy issues regarding the ‘big-data’ that allowed many AI systems to function was also becoming a significant source of controversy. In this piece, Marty Kohn, MD, chief medical scientist on the IBM Watson Medical Team, gives insight into his personal thoughts and feelings regarding how society might both accept and reject the artificial intelligence advances of the coming years.