Transmaterial: The Future of Our Built Environment. Are you ready for Transmaterial? Do you even know what that might be? There’s some meaning to it in the name. Transmaterial, something that looks through or across a horizon, something that goes beyond. Blaine Brownell, the co-director of the sustainable design and architecture program at the University of Minnesota has spent a lot of time collecting all the transmaterials that exist. With his own Transstudio and the Transmaterial series, Brownell has curated the best of these shocking, creative, and always innovative attempts to better our lives through better design. Like a manual to the world of transformative architecture, the Transmaterial books collect information and imagery on the best of the new materials and the companies that engineered them.
There are electrified walls, concrete video screens, and building materials made from the roots of mushrooms. In the Transmaterial world, there is stainless steel fabric, tables that recognize objects, and myriad uses of solar energy. Transhumanisme : une autre forme d’eugénisme. Politis, 25 juillet 2013 L’eugénisme classique (qu’il ne faut pas confondre avec le nazisme) voulait compenser les effets indésirables sur l’homme du progrès, lequel favoriserait la génération et la survie d’individus de « mauvaise qualité », incapables de contribuer à l’effort collectif… pour davantage de progrès. D’où la stérilisation des malades et des « inutiles » ou l’élimination des nouveaux-nés malformés, on ne disait pas encore non compétitifs. Il y a moins d’un siècle, presque tout le monde croyait pouvoir maîtriser la nature pour en tirer des bienfaits sans limites.
Pour un observateur objectif, le progrès a fait long feu avec l’épuisement des ressources fossiles, la pollution généralisée, le climat déstabilisé ou la biodiversité bien entamée. C’est là que surgit le transhumanisme : il s’agit de modifier l’homme, d’abord pour compenser les effets indésirables du progrès car le désastre environnemental hypothèque jusqu’à notre survie. Transhumanisme, NBIC : un monde sans humains ? Nous sommes entrés dans un nouveau monde sans vraiment nous en rendre compte et ce nouveau monde est régi par de nouvelles règles, de nouveaux modes de fonctionnements imprimés par l’hégémonie du numérique et ses machines. NBIC : la convergence entre l’informatique, les nano-technologies, la biologie et les sciences cognitives : si une réflexion, une dénonciation de l’utilisation du réseau à des fins de surveillance, de contrôle sont indispensables, ne pas regarder de très près ce qu’il se passe au niveau des techno-sciences qui envahissent notre quotidien est une erreur.
Philippe Borrel vient de sortir ce documentaire qui nous invite à mieux découvrir ce monde émergent qui risque de recouvrir l’ancien, avec tous les dangers que cela comporte. Les experts se sont tout approprié, c’est une réalité. Toutes ces transformations radicales du monde, de l’homme, sont réelles, se mettent en place. (Un monde sans humains ? Transhumanists Should Work At Google in Science & Tech. Transhumanists Should Work At Google By: Nitish KannanPublished: February 12, 2014 Google is the first mainstream company with a transhumanist culture and is the single most innovative company in Silicon Valley. Recently, while visiting the Google Venice Headquarters in Los Angeles, I couldn't help but think that Google is one of the few companies in the world with revenues of well over 50 billion dollars and over a 300 billion dollar market cap.
But it still retains its startup feel. The biggest innovations over the last century have come from moonshot ideas. If you're a transhumanist, you would be well served by working at Google. However, in the last decade what Google has done is immensely fascinating. Google wanted to connect over a billion people with smart devices in a decade; Since Android has been created in 2005, Google has connected over a billion Android handsets globally and aims to connect the next 5 billion over the next decade. Humans Appear Programmed to Obey Robots, Studies Suggest.
Two 8-foot robots recently began directing traffic in the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa. The automatons are little more than traffic lights dressed up as campy 1960s robots—and yet, drivers obey them more readily than the humans previously directing traffic there. Maybe it’s because the robots are bigger than the average traffic cop. Maybe it’s their fearsome metallic glint.
Or maybe it’s because, in addition to their LED signals and stilted hand waving, they have multiple cameras recording ne’er-do-wells. “If a driver says that it is not going to respect the robot because it’s just a machine the robot is going to take that, and there will be a ticket for him,” Isaie Therese, the engineer behind the bots, told CCTV Africa. The Congolese bots provide a fascinating glimpse into human-robot interaction. It’s a rather surprising observation that humans so readily obey robots, even very simple ones, in certain situations.
Humans Appear Programmed to Obey Robots, Studies Suggest.