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Oct 21, 2010

Ten most transhumanist words

Posted by in category: futurism

1: Extropian, as in “Transhumanists tend to believe that Kurzweil’s extropian Law of Accelerating Returns will ultimately trump the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.”

2: Bemes, as in “By uploading her bemes, the transhumanist was able to create a mindfile to serve as a basis for a future cyber-conscious analog of herself.” The singular form, beme, refers to a digitally-inheritable unit of beingness (such as a single element of one’s mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values) as in “The transhuman survivalist had a very strong beme for paranoia.”

3: Singularity, as in “The Singularity — that era, no more than a few decades hence, when transhumanists believe machine intelligence will merge with and surpass biological intelligence.”

4: Ectogenetic, as in “Many transhumanists look forward to growing replacements for all or part of their body via controlled differentiation of stem cells in an ex vivo ectogenetic process.”

5: Mindclone, as in “Transhumanists are often accepting of the notion that one identity can simultaneously operate across multiple physical and virtual instantiations, via wireless synchronization, with each such instantiation being a mindclone of a biological original mind.”

6: Vitology, as in “Some transhumanists believe biology is simply a subset of vitology, the study of self-replicating Darwinian code subject to mutation and Natural Selection, with the codes expressed in particular molecules for biology and more generally in differing voltage states for vitology.”

7: Beman, as in “A person created with bio-nanotechnology, a cyborg, a virtual person with a human mind, and a person who integrates electronics into their life are four examples of a bio-electronic human, also known as a beman.

8: Nanobot, as in “Transhumanists have a strong tendency to wish for an acceleration of the date when many problems could be solved with large numbers of microscopic, wirelessly networked, intelligent machines, each of which are called a nanobot.”

9: Techno-progressive, as in “Transhumanists tend to be socially-conscious libertarians, also known as techno-progressive, because they believe technology will solve most of the world’s problems.

10: Transhuman, as in “People who believe it is good to transcend our human biological inheritance, such as by modifying our DNA, our bodies or the substrate for our minds, and/or by leaving the earth to live in space habitats or on other celestial bodies, are considered transhuman.”

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  1. rudi hoffman says:

    Great, pithy, straightforward explanation of tremendous words and concepts. Congratulations on this short yet profound article, Martine!
    Rudi Hoffman
    Port Orange, FL Multiverse