Saturday, October 23, 2010

virtual eschaton

Unfortunately, the hotel in Milan where the Transvision 2010 conference is taking place lost Internet access today. That means that in the middle of Natasha Vita-More's presentation, we went through a 15 minute technical intermission that eventually became a complete severance between those of us presenting in Teleplace and those who were on location. For good or ill, I presented my own paper ("The Mythic Power of Transhumanism") prior to that separation. So the European audience had as much opportunity as the virtual audience to think I'm an idiot. Hopefully, it wasn't unanimous.

In brief, I argued that transhumanism has always been religious despite the objections of members of the H+ community and that, by embracing their religiosity, they'll have greater storytelling power than when they reject it. And, since storytelling power is the greatest power in the universe (no matter what the physicists might tell us), I think I gave them good advice.

Irritatingly, the technical delays during Natasha's talk and that subsequently interfered with the gentleman advertising his cryogenics services took up an enormous amount of time, costing us the opportunity to hear from two other speakers. This was very unfortunate, as I was looking forward to hearing them. Lincoln Cannon's talk on the Mormon Transhumanism can be read on his site. I haven't read it yet, but I look forward to doing so.

4 comments:

  1. as i said to another participant, i love how promising these telepresence technologies are but i look forward to them being fulfilling instead. of course, by then we'll be complaining that our holograms aren't rezzing properly...

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  2. Thanks for your great presentation Robert. After the talk all participants knelt on the floor, singing hymns and praying for the salvation of their immortal mindfiles in The One, so I guess you connected with the audience.

    My first post-conference report:
    http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/10/transvision-2010-october-22-24-2010.html

    In a few days I will announce the online-only workshop "Turing Church Online Workshop 1" scheduled for November 20.

    I am sure once we have fully immersive telepresence our (solid and touchable) holograms will rez properly, perhaps the problem will be de-rezzing;-)

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  3. there's an idea, giulio...someone should write a book of H+ hymns. ;)

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  4. Turing Church Online Workshop 1, Teleplace, Saturday November 20, 9am-1pm PST

    http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/11/turing-church-online-workshop-1.html

    Robert, we look forward to seeing you at the workshop. As we discussed your role will be to observe, take notes and ask questions, but perhaps you will sing a good hymn at some point.

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