T his year Caltech hosted the Humanity+ conference. I had been given a press pass to attend, but for a variety of reasons, plus perhaps a bit of stay at home fever on my part  I chose to send my avator to the conference instead, no, actually I streamed it instead. I sat transfixed in front of my computer for most of the first day and for as as much as I had time to the second day which was unfortunately just a few hours. I am only going to touch upon some of the many ideas that were discussed, and hope I do justice to them.  Please forgive me if I misquote anyone. Speakers came up and talked about extending human life, death, apps for smart phones, artificial intelligence, the Pharmacutical Industry, AI and experimental evolution, bio technolgy, venture capital,quantum computers, uploading our consciousness, to name a few of the topics. I’m not sure for how long this web page will be up but on it you can find a complete list of the topics and speakers of the conference. Before the conference I had never heard of the group called Humanity Plus which used to be named, WTA (World Transhumanist Association). The mission statement on their web page states; Humanity Plus is an international non profit membership organization which advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities. We support the development of and access to new technologies that enable everyone to enjoy better minds, better bodies and better lives. The term transhumanist was entirely new to me as well. The transhumanist movement upon which they are founded seems to encompass a wide variety of people who are by no means unified in their ideas or belief systems. I found a transhumanist declaration on their web site the first of 8 declarations being- “Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth. I did pick up that there was some concern over the public image of transhumanists, which may have been one reason the name of the group was recently changed to Humanity Plus. Michael Masucci who is the founder of EZTV here in Los Angeles brought up the idea that if you are using anything you are not born with, clothing, hearing aids, etc. you have already gone beyond biology and are transhuman. In addressing the public image of transhumanists he said something in the order of, “ Knowing things is scary to a lot of people- a number of cutural perceptions that define what it is to be human- so there are battles- we (transhumanists) talk in ways that may often scare people- for example, woman who can think and dare to think they are equal of men,on far to many parts of this planet that is scary” He also  talked about such issues as who owns you when you are data in someone else’s stream, science is evolving faster than the legal system, and how art can limit a backlash from “technophobic fundamentalism.” RU Sirius of the Humanity Plus group came up to talk about “Problems solved: What ‘s Next for H+ Magazine ” a good source to find out about many of the subjects discussed in the conference. He also was concerned about the image of transhumanists and he said something in the order of, ” transhumanists are people very focused on solving problems for everyone, taking on the major perceived and real problems, dealing with disease, economic scarcity and death for starters.” He gave an example of problems he would personally like solved saying I can’t make copies of myself nor can I live like Keith Richards and not die. He quoted William Gibson saying, “The future is here, it is just not distributed yet”. Before I go into some of the heavier stuff if there are any of you who need a career plan after this conference I am convinced it is apps for smart phones. Ami Li (Meidesign) cochair of the conference, in her talk, ”How Mobile Technology is Transforming the World” had me convinced that in a few years all of us will be using several apps simultaneously. Seriously the figures for how many apps are being used now and the predictions for how many will be used in the future were staggering. She took us on a tour of apps currently out, for example ones that locate the nearest bathroom for you or Redfin which will show you where the nearest open house is taking place, TwittARound which can find who is tweeting near you, or ClickFixed which can be used to report problems such as broken sidewalks, traffic lights etc. Or there is Siri a personal digital assistant. With mark the spot you can report where calls are dropped, or snaptell for shopping reviews, or shopSavy, just scan the barcode and it will tell you where the best buy for that product is. Unfortunately for my future career in apps I missed  session 4 on the second day “Business and Economy in the Era of Radical Technomorphosis” with topics such as   “ Harnessing Increasing Technological Progress in Business Performance” or “ Re-Imagining Humans – Using video games to cultivate mind body awareness and natural intelligence” . Ami also brought up the possibility of mobile phones with AI and 3d holograms that talk and interact with you. Her closing thoughts were speculating on how attached we could get to the holograms, good or bad. Natasha Vita-More , PhD researcher, University of Plymouth, is media designer and theorist and a frequent guest speaker on topics concerning the future in the international arena. She started by talking about how we have historically been judged by our blood lines, gender, economic status but now in t he future it may be more our electronic staus. Building avitars with multiple selves and personalities, biker chick to weight lifter, to androgenous being, as we flit back and forth between the virtual and what we call the real world. As we develop our virtual selves with their multiple personalities we will be mutable as far as gender, and everything else. She talked about design as a problem solving technology. She talked about wearable technology ranging from tatoos that show the mood of the person wearing it or their blood sugar levels to 2 nd order cybernetics such as a heart doner mechanism which would enable you to grasp the emotions of someone in your vicinity. Will we wear our biologies or will our biologies wear us? Then there is the ultimate form of life extension, extending life into non biological forms. Cybernetics and radical constructionists today talk of taking the system and putting you inside the system, uploading yourself. Which brings us to the larger question of personhood, what are you, what aspects of yourself would be uploaded? Why is personhood so important especially as we have so many multiple personalities. How often are we fooled by who we think we are talking to, who is the real person behind the avitar. Who is the real person behind ourselves? Several speakers got up to talk about extending human life. To quote from an article written by Ben Goertze the organizer of the conference, The term “biological immortality” doesn’t mean what you may think – it doesn’t mean living forever, but merely “the absence of a sustained increase in rate of mortality as a function of chronological age.” That is, you’ve reached biological immortality if your “personal death odds” – your chance of dying during a given random day, month or year — has stopped increasing. Stephen Cole s (Gerontology Research Group & UC Irvine), “Is There a Maximum Human Lifespan?” Talked about how age is programmed. Bowhead Whales live for 225 years. He feels there may be no upper limit to how long we can live if we start to understand that programming. . He quoted Allan Harrington from 1967, “ death is an imposition on the human race can no longer be tolerated”. Michael Rose from UC Irvine in his talk “Building Methuselahs” talked about an aging plateau. It is his contention that somewhere in their 90′s human beings stop aging. They hit a plateau for a number of years. People of course are still subject to disease at this time. He would like to change where that plateau occurs, have it happen earlier in our lives. He has turned out a book on the subject “Does Aging Stop” He suggested that after age 40 people adopt a hunter gatherer lifestyle (don’t eat anything from a grain grass or rice, or a cows utter) and that this could help create an earlier plateau. Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Foundation talked about how aging is the progressive accumulation of molecular damage. Then he did something unusual by stating that the plateau theory of Michael Rose that he had previously disagreed with may actually be true. Gregory Benford (Genescient Corp) Talks about a product “Stem Cell 100″ his company has turned out to increase longevity by enhancing the natural ability of the genes. They have chosen to go the herbal route for their product as creating a drug costs runs into a lot of cost and time to satisfy the requirements of the FDA. Others also complain of this during the conference. There was talk of how to reform the FDA. There were also speakers about the future of bio technology. Joseph Jackson talked about how the rate of actual new therapeutics was very small. Some new exciting better business models and innovative systems were discussed, garage bio tech, participatory investment, innovation bonds for green technology to name a few. It was mentioned that Intel has a science festival competition. Jwalt ( Spontaneous Fantasia) gave an interactive computer graphics performance of unfolding images that unfortunately was not streamed. He did give a talk about his work saying that he breaks down the traditional animation principles of time and space and builds them back up as a performing art form. He is both technically and artistically gifted. In a future blog I will be interviewing Jwalt. I invite you to go to his web page to see some of his outstanding art and upcoming performances. Another interesting talk I heard was given by Suzanne Gilder (DWave Systems) “Pavlov’s AI: What do super intelligences really want?” Talking about AGI (artificial general intelligence ) she approached the question of what happens when the boundary between human and machines go away. What happens when we upload consciousness into those machines and they become smarter than us and and are wandering and exploring the universe. There is certainly the benefit that they will be better scientists than us and will bring us new knowledge. Human intelligence is what we consider to be the pinacle of what we have found in the universe so far. When these systems become autonomous and more intelligent then us they will be able to improve themselves. We humans operate on a reward system that has developed as we developed over the millenniums. As an example Suzanne ( a scientist herself) mentioned scientists work for the reward of fame, fortune, and the nobel prize.  The reward system has enabled our self survival and our survival as a species. Should we program the new systems/robots with the same reward system? What happens when they are smart enough to program themselves and create their own reward system, their own reason perhaps for being? At this point she brought up intelligent people she knows who are aware of their own reward system and are very depressed. She feels that machines when handed control of their own reward system will see it as futile and will just shut themselves off. It made me wonder, Are we machines that have begun to see what makes us tick and are now experiencing our own feelings of futility? Some might say the whole field of psychology is devoted to helping us reprogram ourselves.  Suzanne also mentioned that being conscious is subjective and perhaps everything is conscious. A photon from its own subjective viewpoint might consider itself to be conscious. As such they are more intelligent than us, they solve the problem of survival by being self generating and they do live forever. The conference gave me a lot of food for thought and leads for further exploration. I hope the conference will be put up on the humanity plus site so that all can benefit from it.  I would love to catch the talks I missed and hear the others again.