Future Current

Mike LaTorra and J. Hughes led a group discussion at the Convergence 08 unconference titled “Digital Serfs and Cyborg Buddhas.” Digital (or data) serfdom currently exists — and is growing — among high-tech workers. In a future of mind-uploading, the situation could worsen into a dystopian horror. The bright alternative to this vision of servitude in dark digital mills is life as an enhanced, empowered, free individual, the Cyborg Buddha, who enjoys both technological abundance and the time to enjoy it in contemplative bliss.

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Mike Treder of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and J. Hughes of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies introduce the November 14 conference on Global Catastrophic Risks taking place in Mountain View, California.  The event followed a meeting on the same subject, an immensely diverse collection of events could constitute global catastrophes, in July at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.  The topic for the conference was “Building a Resilient Civilization.”

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The IEET, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and the Lifeboat Foundation hosted a meeting on Global Catastrophic Risks on Friday, November 14 in Mountain View, California, one day prior to the Convergence 08 Unconference.  The seminar’s theme was “Building a Resilient Civilization,” for which IEET executive director J. Hughes argued in favor of strengthening transnational governance to mitigate risks.

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In his 2006 Transvision presentation, James Hughes offers his views on the present and future of neurotechnologies, a subject that will feature in his upcoming book tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha. He argues that the near future technologies will allow us to modify and assist our emotions and reasoning. Continued from Virtue Engineering: Part One.

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In his 2006 Transvision presentation, James Hughes offers his views on the present and future of neurotechnologies, a subject that will feature in his upcoming book tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha. He argues that the near future technologies will allow us to modify and assist our emotions and reasoning. One of their purposes will be to assist our adherence to self-chosen moral codes and citizenship obligations.

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James Hughes serves as the executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, where he produces the weekly syndicated public affairs talk show Changesurfer Radio. He is the author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future, and is working on a second book on neurotechnology, tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha: Using Neurotechnologies to Enhance Virtue. In September of 2007 he spoke at the Singularity Summit in San Francisco. There he argued that sentient, self-willed, greater-than-human machine minds are very likely in the coming fifty years. But to ensure that they don’t threaten the welfare of the rest of the minds on the planet a number of steps need to be taken.

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Software engineer Emil Gilliam and James Hughes of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

How far are we willing to go in our quest to build better bodies? Would we agree to having nanoscale machines implanted in our brains and bodies to make us function better? Interviewed by Dheera Sujan of Radio Netherlands for “The State We’re In,” James Hughes, director of the World Transhumanist Association mentions, “At least a quarter of the population of the United States has one kind of implant in their body already.” Citing several examples from contact lenses to pace makers, scientists are already working on implants, computer chips and nanotechnology in medicine that could prevent diseases, prolong human life and enhance our physical and mental performances. “We [trans-humanists] want to argue that human beings can become more than what people consider to be human and that’s part of our right.”

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SIAI Interview Series – James Hughes

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James Hughes leading a discussion at the IEET conference in Chicago, Illinois

James Hughes, Ph.D., is the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies Executive Director. A bioethicist and sociologist, he teaches Health Policy at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, where he also taught bioethics. Dr. Hughes is author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future (Westview Press, 2004), and produces a syndicated weekly radio program, Changesurfer Radio.

He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and the Working Group on Ethics and Technology at Yale University. Dr. Hughes speaks on medical ethics, health care policy and future studies worldwide, and appears often on radio and television. In his talk at Transvision 2007, entitled “Cyborgs Today & in the Future,” he explored some of the historical continuities between the ideals of the Enlightenment philosophes and the present-day steps toward cybernetic augmentation of the human body.
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