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How do The Matrix, Avatar, and Tron reveal the future of existence? Can our brains recognize where "reality" ends and "virtual" begins? What would it mean to live eternally in a digital universe? Where will technology lead us in five, 50, and 500 years? Two innovative scientists explore the mystery and reality of the virtual and examine the profound potential of emerging digital technologies. Welcome to the future....
This book is a collection of distinct essays that explore the future of philosophy by critically examining 10 key texts on consciousness and artificial intelligence. These reviews, several of which were published as stand-alone pieces on Integral World in Europe, explore the ins and outs of what self-reflective awareness is and what it means to be human in an increasingly digitized world.
Faqir Chand was a remarkable Indian sage who spent over 75 years practicing an ancient meditation technique, popularly known today as surat shabd yoga, which attempts to induce a consciously controlled near-death experience. This book contains Faqir Chand's unique autobiography which was dictated shortly before his death in Urdu and translated during his lifetime into English. It also includes a seasoned selection of Faqir Chand's radical teachings.
Ten years from today, the center of our digital lives will no longer be the smart phone, but device that looks like ordinary eyeglasses: except those glasses will have settings for virtual and augmented reality. What you really see and what is computer generated will be mixed so tightly together, that we won't really be able to tell what is real and what is illusion.
How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society, and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology - and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.
This book provides a wide overview of Darwin's views on a variety of subjects. It also draws out some of the implications of his groundbreaking work on psychology and philosophy.
How do The Matrix, Avatar, and Tron reveal the future of existence? Can our brains recognize where "reality" ends and "virtual" begins? What would it mean to live eternally in a digital universe? Where will technology lead us in five, 50, and 500 years? Two innovative scientists explore the mystery and reality of the virtual and examine the profound potential of emerging digital technologies. Welcome to the future....
This book is a collection of distinct essays that explore the future of philosophy by critically examining 10 key texts on consciousness and artificial intelligence. These reviews, several of which were published as stand-alone pieces on Integral World in Europe, explore the ins and outs of what self-reflective awareness is and what it means to be human in an increasingly digitized world.
Faqir Chand was a remarkable Indian sage who spent over 75 years practicing an ancient meditation technique, popularly known today as surat shabd yoga, which attempts to induce a consciously controlled near-death experience. This book contains Faqir Chand's unique autobiography which was dictated shortly before his death in Urdu and translated during his lifetime into English. It also includes a seasoned selection of Faqir Chand's radical teachings.
Ten years from today, the center of our digital lives will no longer be the smart phone, but device that looks like ordinary eyeglasses: except those glasses will have settings for virtual and augmented reality. What you really see and what is computer generated will be mixed so tightly together, that we won't really be able to tell what is real and what is illusion.
How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society, and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology - and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.
This book provides a wide overview of Darwin's views on a variety of subjects. It also draws out some of the implications of his groundbreaking work on psychology and philosophy.
The idea that the world is an illusion that betrays its real origin has a long tradition and can be found in the writings of Hindu rishis, early Greek philosophers, and Christian Gnostics. What is perhaps surprising is to find such a rich literature on the subject in neuroscience and quantum physics. The latest, and perhaps most provocative, idea to gain some currency in varying scientific disciplines is the hypothesis that the universe is the result of a computational simulation....
In this book, we have included excerpts from the Socratic dialogues (as penned by his most famous student, Plato) and Professor Andrea Diem-Lane's brilliant treatise on the "Cerebral Mirage" which brings Plato and Socrates up to date by showing how the latest findings in quantum theory and neuroscience substantiate much of early Greek skepticism, particularly concerning how easily we can be deceived by our various forms of certainty.
This book explores the famous quantum debate between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. A clear and precise exposition of a most complicated issue concerning the implications of indeterminacy and photon entanglement.
What is matter anyways? - From organisms to cells to proteins to molecules to atoms to electrons to light? The most famous equation in modern physics is Einstein's E=MC2, which, if we pause for a second, is as mysterious as anything written in our ancient religious scriptures and measurably more radical. My point is that the resistance we have to reductionists who say we are "just matter" is because we tend to think of matter as flat. It is, of course, anything but.
Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.
For the first time in history, the secrets of the living brain are being revealed by a battery of high-tech brain scans devised by physicists. Now what was once solely the province of science fiction has become a startling reality. Recording memories, telepathy, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis are not only possible; they already exist.
This book is a collection of distinct essays that explore the future of education, the role of computers, and the nature of consciousness, with particular attention paid to the role artificial intelligence will play in our school and other learning outlets.
We are witnessing an informational tsunami the likes of which is completely unprecedented in human history. The digital revolution is such that almost every aspect of our lives is being upended. Who could have imagined just two decades ago that the vast majority of us would check our smart phones on average 150 times a day or more? Or, that young people worldwide would consciously choose to spend eight hours a day in front of a computer monitor playing never ending games of Minecraft?
The great disruptor of the 21st century is our attention span, and the Internet and computational technologies have opened up a Pandora's box of endless distractions. We are not merely entertaining ourselves to death (to echo Neil Postman's prophetic words), we are becoming entertainment ourselves as we moment-to-moment reveal our innermost selves on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and new emerging forms of social media. What all this will eventually portend nobody precisely knows, except that Ray Kurzweil's outlandish idea of a Singularity in 2045 doesn't look so outlandish anymore. We are on the edge of a digital precipice, and where we will fall appears to have no bottom.