assignment 8 zachary langdon h+

Fears: harmful idea inception from inaccurate speech, pain (physical, emotional, terminal, etc), homelessness, poor application of burgeoning technologies

Annoyances: being called Zach by default, unable to install IOT tech due to lack of home ownership

Accomplishments: making desk and chair, Langdonian

Confusions: bright/dark future (personal and societal)

Sorrows: life being comparatively perfect yet frustration still occurring

Dreams: design career (please don’t get replaced by algorithms, please)

Idiosyncrasies: transhumanist, nerd (implied from previous), (over?) use of circumlocution

Risks: space (SPACE!)

Beloved Possessions, Now and Then: then-Hotwheels, now-tech

Problems: ramping up productivity in sustainable and healthy manner

            My first fear is connected to – or rather a solution to – my first idiosyncrasy. Transhumanism, not to be confused with transgender, it the area of philosophical thought concerned with – and often promoting – the incorporation of technology into human biology, from glasses to AI. I became aware of it through the campaigning of Zoltan Istvan (yes, his birthname is Zoltan) as the first presidential candidate for the transhumanist party (symbolized with “h+”). This campaign has released the transhumanist bill of rights, their version of a party platform, outlining their principles of governance. Here’s a short excerpt:

Article 6. Involuntary aging shall be classified as a disease. All nations and their governments will actively seek to dramatically extend the lives and improve the health of its citizens by offering them scientific and medical technologies to overcome involuntary aging.

The bill consists of a preamble discussing the nature and reason of the bills existence and 6 articles outlining, respectively, policy on immortality(for), cultural influences of immortality law(against), “morphological freedom” (for), existential threats(against), space exploration(for), and immortality laws again. It’s this forward (ok, really forward) policy that gives me some hope for humanity’s future in a post-singularity reality (hopes which are quickly dashed when looking at mainstream politics). And to clarify, I wouldn’t vote for Zolt, he is idealistic past the point of reality. Zoltan wants to completely defund the military industrial complex and institute a scientific industrial one; a nice policy if America was the world government, but it happens that other countries exist who would take advantage of such an effort. Nevertheless, the bill inspires hope for a kumbaya future.

Here's a link to the full bill, through I warn you, for futurists, they have a pretty bad website. http://transhumanistparty.org/TranshumanistBillofRights.html