Brent Kearney

I came across this documentary, Technocalyps, (like apocalypse, get it?) the other day, and although I’ve only watched the first third of it, I can say that it’s pretty cool. I didn’t learn much, but I’ve been getting into the subject for awhile now. It’s a good documentary to pass to someone who isn’t up to date on what’s going on in artificial intelligence, cybernetics, bioengineering, etc.. There some kooky sounding people in the film, but what else is new? I loved all of the imagery from old horror movies and from Burning Man.

Today I sent the link to my pal Rob, who, in pursuit of his Eyeborg Project, is becoming somewhat transhuman himself. He will be the world’s first transhuman documentary maker, and apparently, a working prototype is imminent. He’s in Belgium to speak about the project at the Digital News Affairs conference, and as it turns out, this transhumanism film was made by Frank Theys, of Belgium. Weird coincidence. Anyways, Rob is getting a lot of press for his project, and I was delighted today when his story came across my radar via the KurzweilAI.net news feed (in my sidebar). Check out the clip:

One recurring theme that futurists talk about in discussions of transhumanism, including Bruce Sterling in the TechnoCalyps film, is that there won’t be one big sudden change in society, where we will wake up one day and there will be a race of super-intelligent cyborgs that look like RoboCop roaming the Earth, and people will be lining up to join them. It will be a gradual process — an electronic eye here, an artificial organ there — people will continue to integrate technology into their bodies as needed or as desired.

The technology is still very young, but what most people fail to realize is that it is improving at a very fast rate, and that rate is itself increasing. Today’s technology will seem as crude to us in the near future as medieval medicine does to us now. There will come a time when the integration of technology with our bodies won’t just be for replacing missing parts — it will be a true enhancement, to extend and improve our health, and our abilities.

Pioneers like my soon-to-be-cyborg friend Rob and his colleagues are a driving force for pushing technology out of the lab and into practice. As the pace and breadth of research accelerates, more people with this kind of courage and initiative will be required to bring talent together and apply their skills to solving real-world problems. Cheers to them!