Transhumanist Agenda Discussions - 12160 Social Network2024-03-29T00:06:28Zhttps://12160.info/groups/group/forum?groupUrl=transhumanist-agenda&feed=yes&xn_auth=noTranshumanism debunked: Why drinking the Kurzweil Kool-Aid will only make you dead, not immortaltag:12160.info,2013-06-25:2649739:Topic:12390622013-06-25T17:08:02.731ZCryptocurrencyhttps://12160.info/profile/KRYPKE32
<p><strong>Mike Adams</strong><br></br> <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/040925_transhumanism_Ray_Kurzweil_cult.html">Natural News</a><br></br> June 25, 2013</p>
<p>In this article, I’m going to reveal how <i>transhumanism</i> is a dangerous, irrational death cult shrouded in the language of geeky cybernetics. In fact, the entire idea that you can “upload your mind to a computer” is complete junk science quackery, as you’ll soon see.</p>
<p>In case you’re new to the term, “transhumanism” means…</p>
<p><strong>Mike Adams</strong><br/> <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/040925_transhumanism_Ray_Kurzweil_cult.html">Natural News</a><br/> June 25, 2013</p>
<p>In this article, I’m going to reveal how <i>transhumanism</i> is a dangerous, irrational death cult shrouded in the language of geeky cybernetics. In fact, the entire idea that you can “upload your mind to a computer” is complete junk science quackery, as you’ll soon see.</p>
<p>In case you’re new to the term, “transhumanism” means uploading your mind to a machine, discarding your body, then achieving immortality by living forever through machines and robots. Google’s director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil, has been pushing this cult for many years, and just recently he promised that by 2045, humanity would achieve what he calls the “singularity,” where our minds can be uploaded to computers. (<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2344398/Google-futurist-claims-uploading-entire-MINDS-computers-2045-bodies-replaced-machines-90-years.html">Click here for the source of this claim.</a>) In less than a century, Kurzweil says, we could all discard our “fragile” human bodies and inhabit advanced robotic systems as our new immortal selves.</p>
<p>Kurzweil’s cult is so bizarre and dangerous that following it can only lead to a <i>lunatrocity</i> of mass death and deception. Kurzweil’s sci-fi cybernetic mind-meld theories are so outlandish that they make Scientology’s galactic narratives sound like Christian Sunday school.</p>
<p>Where to even begin the debunking of it all? Let’s start with its claims…</p>
<p><strong>How would transhumanism even work?</strong></p>
<p>Let’s examine the claims of the transhumanism cult leaders like Kurzweil. They are saying that by 2045, all the following technology will exist:</p>
<p>Technology #1) A way to “scan” your entire brain and record every neuron and holographic patterning that exists in your brain.</p>
<p>Technology #2) A way to build an equally complex computing system that has equivalent computational capabilities as your brain.</p>
<p>Technology #3) A way to COPY your brain scan into the computing system. This is called “uploading” your brain to the machine.</p>
<p>Once these three technologies exist, we are promised, we can all transfer our minds to computer systems and experience “digital immortality!”</p>
<p>But wait a second. Something’s already missing here, do you see it? In this plan <b>there is no mechanism to transfer your consciousness to the machine</b>. So even if all three of these technologies are adequately developed (which is possible, by the way), they still don’t provide a way to merge your mind with a machine.</p>
<address><strong>Nothing more than a computer simulation of your brain</strong></address>
<p>All you’ve really done, even if all three technologies are developed and working by 2045, is made <i>a copy of your brain</i>. This copy may, indeed, be able to run on the machine, but it’s nothing more than <b>a simulation of your brain</b>. It is not you.</p>
<p>Similarly, if someone takes a photo of you and posts a print of the photo on the wall, they can say they’ve made you “immortal” through photography, but your mind is obviously not living inside the photograph.</p>
<p>If you’re a star in a motion picture, you may be “immortalized” by your fans who see you as “living forever” in your famous films, but your consciousness does not live inside the movie. The real “you” is still inhabiting your human body.</p>
<p>No matter how complex the depicted simulation, a “scan” of you that is replicated in another medium (a photo, a movie, or a highly advanced computer) is not you. Thus, the promise of transhumanism is a fraudulent one, and “uploading” is the wrong metaphor. You aren’t uploading your consciousness to a machine; you’re simply creating a non-conscious computer simulation of your brain.</p>
<p>And how do we know that’s true? To answer that question, we have to dig deeper… into the definition of YOU.</p>
<p><strong>What are YOU?</strong></p>
<p>I’ll keep this short by beginning with the ending: You are not merely your body.</p>
<p>“You” are far more than your body. And the way we know this is because the instant you die, your body is still the same it was, but the “you” is no longer present.</p>
<p>“You” are actually a non-physical consciousness <i>interfaced with a physical brain</i>. “You” are a non-physical consciousness sometimes called a soul or spirit. This consciousness experiences the world through your physical sensory organs.</p>
<p>This discussion of consciousness is the part that drives the transhumanists bonkers because to be a member of their cult, you have to believe that there is no such thing as consciousness… or a soul… or free will. You have to believe that consciousness is <b>an artifact of the brain itself</b> – a kind of “ghost in the machine,” if you will, that somehow gives rise to the self-delusion of awareness.</p>
<p>This means you have to believe free will is an illusion and that if you copy the brain and paste it somewhere else, then somehow magically that other thing becomes “you.”</p>
<p>But this makes no sense. <b>There is no mechanism for the transfer of the focal point of consciousness</b>. If you copy and paste your brain (i.e. “upload” your brain) to another machine, but your human body is still alive and breathing, then you haven’t “uploaded” your consciousness anywhere. You have only made a complex facsimile of your neurology.</p>
<p><strong>Transhumanism debunked</strong></p>
<p>Such is the great gap in the theory of transhumanism: There is no mechanism to transfer your consciousness (your soul) from your body to the machine. How do you “transplant” your soul? The transhumanists have no answer for that. They simply pretend your soul doesn’t exist and therefore need not be considered at all.</p>
<p>There is nothing in their plan to transplant your soul. So what’s actually going to happen to all these transhumanism cult members — and here’s the hilarious part in all this — is that people like Ray Kurzweil will just DIE, and if they did manage to copy their brain to a machine, that machine will simply run as a simulation, carrying on the computational <i>appearance</i> of Ray Kurzweil, but doing so mindlessly, with no soul or consciousness.</p>
<p>What do you call fifty transhumanists who have uploaded their brains to machines and then killed off their physical bodies? <b>A busy day at the morgue</b>.</p>
<p><strong>Transhumanism is a death cult, much like Heaven’s Gate</strong></p>
<p>Ultimately, <b>transhumanism is a death cult</b> much like the infamous <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/036112_sociopaths_cults_influence.html">Heaven’s Gate cult led by Marshal Applewhite</a>. Marshal promised his followers that their minds would merge with space aliens who were hiding in a mothership piggybacked on the Hale-Bopp comet. Just like Ray Kurzweil, Marshal Applewhite promised immortality and said that disconnecting from your body (via suicide, of course) was the path to enlightenment.</p>
<p>Believe it or not, Applewhite said that he was actually an alien spirit who hijacked a human body, taking it over for his own delusional purposes. (He never explains what he did with the previous soul that once occupied the body.) You can watch a video of him explaining this here:</p>
<p>Mirroring all this kookiness, Ray Kurzweil promises that you will live forever if you discard your body and merge your brain with machines that have yet to be invented. At some point, just like with Heaven’s Gate, you will need to “kill” your physical body in order to complete the “upload” to Kurzweil’s cybernetic computers. There’s probably some Kool-Aid involved in all this, no doubt. Kurzweil-Kool-Aid.</p>
<p>Both Applewhite and Kurzweil are obviously insane. Both are also extremely convincing and charismatic. Kurzweil’s shtick is that he’s very convincing to techno-geeks at Google… people who have now put him in charge of Google’s technology. This alone is frightening, realizing that Google has been suckered into the cult of transhumanism — a cult based on such bizarre sci-fi distortions that it makes Scientology look downright conservative by comparison.</p>
<p>Perhaps Google will soon announce its own cult: <b>Googletology</b>. Or <b>Kurzweilianism</b>.</p>
<p>But there’s something even more frightening in all this: The transhumanists <b>may succeed in creating such convincing simulations that they fool huge numbers of other people into thinking the mind-meld with machines actually works!</b> And they may then commit suicide to “merge with the machines” as Kurzweil describes.</p>
<p>Are you getting this yet?</p>
<p><strong>A convincing simulation is still not you</strong></p>
<p>See, if you do manage to scan a human brain and copy it over to a highly-complex computer system — and this very well may be possible by 2045 — it may create a strongly convincing simulation that <i>appears</i> to be alive. It may be able to talk with you, reason with you and even inhabit a humanoid robot that walks around the world much like a human. This illusion of consciousness may be so convincing that large numbers of individuals are convinced to kill themselves as part of some sort of “transference” to the machine. It will be given a friendly-sounding name, of course, such as “You 2.0.” Drink the Kool-Aid, kill off your physical body, and then your brain pattern gets copied to a digital simulation of you while the Kurzweil cultists stand back and say, “Shazam! You’ve been uploaded into a machine!” Ain’t it trendy?</p>
<p>Not really. You’re actually dead, and now the machine is running a “convincing simulation” of your personality. This simulation may manage to convince your friends that you’re still “alive” inside the machine, but your spirit is actually long gone, having departed the earthly realm when your physical body died (from drinking the Kool-Aid).</p>
<p>Realistically, the task of creating computer systems capable of fooling human beings into thinking they’re “real people” is not so astonishing given a timeframe of 30 years or so. But <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test">the Turing test</a> never took into account the existence of a non-physical consciousness or soul. Turing’s theories were missing something vital to existence: consciousness!</p>
<p>So if you see a computer system running an on-screen personality that claims to be Ray Kurzweil, and it invites you to drink some Kool-Aid and merge with the machines, just <i>hit delete</i> and go back to playing Farmville.</p>
<p><img alt="" src="http://www.naturalnews.com/jason/Ray-Kurzweil-Upload-Brain-Computer-v2.jpg"/></p> Top Ten Transhumanist Technologiestag:12160.info,2013-06-20:2649739:Topic:12322272013-06-20T06:56:30.788ZCryptocurrencyhttps://12160.info/profile/KRYPKE32
<p><a class="plain" href="http://lifeboat.com/ex/reports">by Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member</a> <a href="http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.michael.anissimov">Michael Anissimov</a>.<br></br> </p>
<h3>Overview</h3>
<p>Transhumanists advocate the improvement of human capacities through advanced technology. Not just technology as in gadgets you get from Best Buy, but technology in the grander sense of strategies for eliminating disease, providing cheap but high-quality products to the…</p>
<p><a class="plain" href="http://lifeboat.com/ex/reports">by Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member</a> <a href="http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.michael.anissimov">Michael Anissimov</a>.<br/> </p>
<h3>Overview</h3>
<p>Transhumanists advocate the improvement of human capacities through advanced technology. Not just technology as in gadgets you get from Best Buy, but technology in the grander sense of strategies for eliminating disease, providing cheap but high-quality products to the world’s poorest, improving quality of life and social interconnectedness, and so on. Technology we don’t notice because it’s blended in with the fabric of the world, but would immediately take note of its absence if it became unavailable. (Ever tried to travel to another country on foot?) Technology needn’t be expensive — indeed, if a technology is truly effective it will pay for itself many times over. <br/> <br/> Transhumanists tend to take a longer-than-average view of technological progress, looking not just five or ten years into the future but twenty years, thirty years, and beyond. We realize that the longer you look forward, the more uncertain the predictions get, but one thing is quite certain: if a technology is physically possible and obviously useful, human (or transhuman!) ingenuity will see to it that it gets built eventually.<br/> <br/> As we gain ever greater control over the atomic structure of matter, our technological goals become increasingly ambitious, and their payoffs more and more generous. Sometimes new technologies even make us happier in a long-lasting way: the Internet would be a prime example. In the following list I take a look at what I consider the top ten transhumanist technologies.<br/> <br/> </p>
<h3>The List</h3>
<p><a name="10"></a> </p>
<h3>10. Cryonics</h3>
<p></p>
<center><a href="http://www.alcor.org"><img src="http://lifeboat.com/images/alcor.dewar.jpg" border="0" height="980" width="560"/></a></center>
<p><br/> Cryonics is the high-fidelity preservation of the human body, and particularly the brain, after what we would call death, in anticipation of possible future revival. Cryonics is an important transhumanist technology not only because it is already available today, but because the technology is relatively mature — we can reliably stop cells from decaying. In vitrification, the brain is not frozen in the conventional manner but with a cryoprotectant (antifreeze) mixture, which effectively prevents the formation of crystals, causing the water to freeze smoothly, like glass.<br/> <br/> Maintenance of a cryo-patient is not difficult — it requires no electricity, but merely the replenishment of liquid nitrogen about every three weeks. As cryonics becomes more popular, this process could become automated and extremely reliable. Further improvements in <a href="http://www.cryonics.org/cryostats.html">dewar</a> technology will continue to increase safety and reduce costs. The <a href="http://www.cryonics.org">Cryonics Institute</a> in Michigan, for example, has operated since 1976 without a single mishap.<br/> <br/> Financed by the interest of the payout of a life insurance policy (which for people under 40 may cost as little as $100 a year to own), patients can be securely cryopreserved for as long as the cryonics company stays afloat and the dewar stays in one piece. Eventual revival does not require the technology to become available tomorrow, or next year… as long as the liquid nitrogen keeps replenished, you can stay on ice for as long as it takes.<br/> <br/> For an existence proof of cryonic revival, there are frogs that can <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v2-3Howprc">freeze solid</a> and revive later, though reviving a human from freezing would likely require <a href="http://www.crnano.org/whatis.htm">molecular nanotechnology</a> (MNT). When we will be able to revive a cryo-patient will be strongly related to when we develop sophisticated MNT. Once we do develop MNT, the prospect of successful revival is extremely likely — it would involve slowly melting the ice and rebooting the metabolism by kickstarting the appropriate chemical reactions within cells.<br/> <br/> <a name="9"></a> </p>
<h3>9. Virtual Reality</h3>
<p></p>
<center><a href="http://www.bit-tech.net/content_images/crysis_new_screenshots/crysis3_large.jpg"><br/> <img src="http://lifeboat.com/images/virtual.reality.jpg" border="0" height="364" width="560"/></a></center>
<p><br/> The above image may look like a photo, but it’s actually a screenshot from the game <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis">Crysis</a>, a first-person shooter which will be released later this year. Look at <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=crysis&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2">screenshots</a> from the game and you’ll see that computer graphics are already beginning to approach photorealism. Sometime in the 2020s, reality simulations will become so high-resolution and immersive that they’ll start to get indistinguishable from the real thing.<br/> <br/> Simulations will become the preferred environments for work and play. Pretty soon the main obstacle to truly immersive VR will not be the visuals but the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic">haptics</a> — our sense of touch. To fool our senses into believing haptic technologies are conveying the real thing, the “frame rate” needs to be significantly higher than for visual technologies, a few hundred updates per second rather than a few dozen — which is why development could take another decade or two. But many millions of dollars are currently going into efforts to develop advanced VR.<br/> <br/> Clearly, World of Warcraft’s eight million subscribers and Second Life’s five million subscribers are onto something. At least 1% of all broadband Internet users play in virtual worlds, and this number is increasing rapidly. These worlds typically outclass the real world in terms of customizability, but still have yet to catch up in terms of sensory richness or social fulfillment. But it’s only a matter of time.<br/> <br/> In the mid-to-late 2020s, I expect full-body, high quality haptic VR suits to be affordable to the average person in developed countries, obtained either from your local Wal-Mart or perhaps printed right out of a desktop nanofactory after payment of a fee. For more on this, here is one scientific paper, <a href="http://web.cs.wpi.edu/%7Egogo/papers/Lindeman_vrst2004.pdf">“Towards full-body haptic feedback”</a>.<br/> <br/> <a name="8"></a> </p>
<h3>8. Gene Therapy/RNA Interference</h3>
<p></p>
<center><a href="http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/illustrations/therapyvector"><img src="http://lifeboat.com/images/gene.therapy.jpg" border="0" height="420" width="560"/></a></center>
<p><br/> Gene therapy replaces bad genes with good genes, and RNA interference can selectively knock out gene expression. Together, they give us an unprecedented ability to manipulate our own genetic code. By knocking out genes that code for certain metabolic proteins, <a href="http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=134599">scientists</a> have been able to make mice that stay slim no matter how much junk food they eat. Lou Gehrig’s disease has been <a href="http://www.news-medical.net/?id=2859">cured</a> in mice, and it could only be a few years before we develop a therapy that can cure it for humans too. <br/> <br/> <a href="http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.aubrey.de.grey">Aubrey de Grey</a>’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_negligible_senescence">SENS</a> (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) research program contains various prescriptions for the use of gene therapy. Within a couple decades or so, progress in anti-aging therapies will improve to the point where we are gaining more than an extra year of lifespan per year, reaching so-called “longevity escape velocity” eventually culminating in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_lifespan">indefinite lifespans</a>.<br/> <br/> Like many transhumanist technologies, gene therapy is really exciting because it’s just beginning. No scientist has yet performed gene therapy on germline cells (sexual cells in the gonads) due to the ethical controversy of producing genetic changes which are heritable, but, as with many of these things, it’s only a matter of time. Regulations in any given country will only be capable of slowing the overall progress of the field by a few years at most.<br/> <br/> The money will go where the research is permitted. In its mature form, gene therapy and genetic engineering will become extremely cheap and powerful, letting humans live comfortably in a wider range of environments and gain immunity to most, if not all diseases. Supercomputers of the future, with thousands or millions of times the crunch power of today’s best, will let us simulate the changes in extreme detail before we attempt them with actual human beings. This will make ill side effects quite unlikely for the typical case, much to the dismay of the authors of “genetic engineering turned daddy into a bloodthirsty zombie!” trash novels and films.<br/> <br/> <a name="7"></a> </p>
<h3>7. Space Colonization</h3>
<p></p>
<center><a href="http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/images/space_colony2.jpg"><img src="http://lifeboat.com/images/space.colony.jpg" border="0" height="769" width="560"/></a></center>
<p><br/> Space colonies will become necessary to house the many billions of individuals that will be born in the future as our population continues to expand at a lazy exponential. In his book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMillennial-Project-Colonizing-Galaxy-Eight%2Fdp%2F0316771635&tag=lifeboatfound-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">The Millennial Project</a></i>, Marshall T. Savage estimates that the Asteroid Belt could hold 7,500 <em>trillion</em> people, if thoroughly reshaped into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_Cylinder">O’Neill colonies</a>. At a typical population growth rate for developed countries at 1% per annum (doubling every 72 years), it would take us 1,440 years to fill that space. Siphoning light gases off Jupiter and Saturn and fusing them into heavier elements for construction of further colonies seems plausible in the longer term as well. <br/> <br/> Why expand into space? For many, the answers are blatantly obvious, but the easiest is that the alternatives are limiting the human freedom to reproduce, or mass murder, both of which are morally unacceptable. Population growth is not inherently antithetical to a love of the environment — in fact, by expanding outwards into the cosmos in all directions, we’ll be able to seed every star system with every species of plant and animal imaginable. The genetic diversity of the embryonic home planet will seem tiny by comparison.<br/> <br/> Space colonization is closely related to transhumanism through the mutual association of futurist philosophy, but also more directly because the embrace of transhumanism will be necessary to colonize space. Human beings aren’t designed to live in space. Our physiological issues with it are manifold, from deteriorating muscle mass to uncontrollable flatulence. On the surface of Venus, we would melt, on the surface of Mars, we’d freeze. The only reasonable solution is to upgrade our bodies. Not terraform the cosmos, but cosmosform ourselves. <br/> <br/> <a name="6"></a> </p>
<h3>6. Cybernetics</h3>
<p></p>
<center><a href="http://www.michaelchorost.com/?page_id=28"><img src="http://lifeboat.com/images/michael.chorost.jpg" border="0" height="478" width="560"/></a></center>
<p><br/> Can you spot the cyborg in this picture? You’re looking right at him! It’s <a href="http://www.michaelchorost.com/?page_id=28">Michael Chorost</a>, the man who was born almost deaf but now can hear, thanks to a cochlear implant. Most of the cyborgs in fiction fit certain stereotypes — bermensch wannabes, cyborg assassins, and supercops. But cyborgs already walk among us, and they look just like normal people.<br/> <br/> This trend will continue in the future. Many cyborg upgrades which will become available in the 20s and 30s, such as hearing and vision enhancement, metabolic enhancement, artificial bones, muscles, and organs, and even brain-computer interfaces will be invisible to the casual observer, implanted beneath the skin. Cybernetic features on the surface, such as dermal enhancements or technological actuators like retractable wings, will be carefully camouflaged. No one will want to shock the rest of society by looking like the tin man in public.<br/> <br/> The process of cyborgization has already been happening for centuries if not millennia, since the advent of clothing and piercings. For many generations, but especially in the last couple decades, our technological gadgets have been getting smaller, more functional, and more closely integrated with our natural activity.<br/> <br/> Recently, Microsoft announced <a href="http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3680631">Microsoft Surface</a>, a mouseless, keyboardless form of desktop computing which takes input from finger tracing and hand gestures. The sophistication of biotechnology and the availability of better materials and precision manufacturing will let us make systems so small and effective that even everyday people elect to implant them.<br/> <br/> These cybernetic systems will greatly improve our everyday experience, from letting us hear a wider range of ambient sounds, to viewing millions of stars rather than just a few thousand, to making us more resistant to accidents. They will improve the overall economy by enabling us do more work in less time for better pay. In the long term, enhanced humans may get a bigger portion of the economic pie than un-augmented humans, but the pie itself will become so much larger than even the poorest humans of tomorrow will be better off than the wealthiest of today.<br/> <br/> Here’s a good <a href="http://igargoyle.com/archives/cyborgs/">cyborg blog</a> I found while doing research for this article, and the <a href="http://news.com.com/2300-11394_3-6120170.html">Power Jacket</a>, a 4-pound jacket that enhances strength and is used by people recovering from paralysis. For more, see the <a href="http://del.icio.us/anissimov/cybernetics">cybernetics</a> category of my del.ic.ious links, or my <a href="http://lifeboat.com/ex/cybernetic.upgrades">top ten list</a> of cybernetic enhancements.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><span class="font-size-5">View the rest of the top ten <a href="http://lifeboat.com/ex/transhumanist.technologies" target="_blank">HERE</a></span></p> New Matt Damon Movie Reveals Mankind’s Transhumanist Destinytag:12160.info,2013-06-20:2649739:Topic:12319942013-06-20T06:45:51.887ZCryptocurrencyhttps://12160.info/profile/KRYPKE32
<p><em>Elysium</em>: The super elite centralizes technological progress to achieve utopia</p>
<p><strong>Paul Joseph Watson</strong><br></br> Infowars.com<br></br> June 19, 2013</p>
<p><em>Elysium</em>, a new movie starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, depicts what many futurists have long predicted is mankind’s ultimate destiny – the division of the human race into two new class systems – a transhumanist elite that centralizes technological progress to achieve utopia, and a massive underclass left to…</p>
<p><em>Elysium</em>: The super elite centralizes technological progress to achieve utopia</p>
<p><strong>Paul Joseph Watson</strong><br/> Infowars.com<br/> June 19, 2013</p>
<p><em>Elysium</em>, a new movie starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, depicts what many futurists have long predicted is mankind’s ultimate destiny – the division of the human race into two new class systems – a transhumanist elite that centralizes technological progress to achieve utopia, and a massive underclass left to rot on a dying planet ruled by robotic drones.</p>
<p><iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QILNSgou5BY?feature=player_embedded&wmode=opaque" frameborder="0"></iframe>
</p>
<p></p>
<p align="left">The trailer for the movie, set to be released on August 9 in the US, begins by depicting an army of robot drones in control of policing that shake down and beat citizens for trivial “violations”. The year is 2154. When Damon’s character expresses anger at his treatment, he is offered a pill to calm him by a robotic bureaucrat. Any form of dissent is treated as “abusive”.</p>
<p align="left">“Humanity is divided between two worlds,” reads the caption, explaining that most of humanity is left to reside on an overpopulated, collapsing earth while the super elite have developed a gargantuan and luxurious off-planet space habitat called Elysium where war, poverty, hunger and disease are non-existent.</p>
<p align="left">Damon’s character is forced to undergo cybernetic enhancements before he can lead a mission to Elysium in order to find a cure for a cancer virus he has contracted. The movie is also clearly designed to be a political jibe at anti-immigration activists.</p>
<p align="left">However, many of the themes of Elysium are clearly lifted from the work of futurists like Ray Kurzweil, who in his book <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines">The Age of Spiritual Machines</a></em> predicted the body scanner depicted in the trailer which eliminates cancer cells.</p>
<p align="left">Kurzweil’s 1999 book, which successfully foresaw the invention of the iPhone, the iPad, Google Glass, iTunes, You Tube and on demand services like Netflix as well as the Kindle, predicts that by 2029 the vast majority of humans will have augmented their bodies with cybernetic implants and those who refuse or are unable to do so will form a “human underclass” that is not productively engaged in the economy.</p>
<p align="left">The wider trend of the elite seeing humans as completely expendable as their roles are taken up by machines unfolds after 2029 when, “There is almost no human employment in production, agriculture, and transportation,” writes Kurzweil.</p>
<p align="left">By 2099, the entire planet is run by artificially intelligent computer systems which are smarter than the entire human race combined – similar to the Skynet system fictionalized in the Terminator franchise.</p>
<p align="left">Humans who resist the pressure to alter their bodies by becoming part-cyborg will be ostracized from society.</p>
<p align="left">“Even among those human intelligences still using carbon-based neurons, there is ubiquitous use of neural implant technology, which provides enormous augmentation of human perceptual and cognitive abilities. Humans who do not utilize such implants are unable to meaningfully participate in dialogues with those who do,” writes Kurzweil.</p>
<p align="left">One of the most prescient voices of dissent against this future – despite his murderous actions – was Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who is widely quoted by futurists like Kurzweil and <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=">Bill Joy</a> as sagely outlining the dangers posed to the general public by the elite’s drive for technological singularity, as depicted in the <em>Elysium</em> movie.</p>
<p align="left">“Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite,” wrote Kaczynski in his manifesto.</p>
<p align="left">*********************</p>
<p align="left">Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for <a href="http://infowars.com/">Infowars.com</a> and <a href="http://prisonplanet.com/">Prison Planet.com</a>. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.</p>