vrmanoj

An Inconvenient Truth indeed ! - Google style

vrmanoj — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:01:00 GMT

An ironic look into an iconic movie about Global warming !...(read more)

Lost in Transcendence : A Tribute to Dr.Albert Hofmann

vrmanoj — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:13:00 GMT

Originally posted on Cyborg Fantasies

Dr.Albert Hofmann, the man who gave the world LSD ( Lysergic acid diethylamide), popularly known as the addictive phsychedelic drug, "acid" is dead. He discovered the drug and intended that it would be used properly and carefully with respect.A similar person who proposed the use of drugs to explore our mind with drugs died in 1996. He was a controversial person who proposed drug use to transcend consciousness. His name was Dr.Timothy Leary and he was perhaps the most respected and yet, one of the most controversial figures of drug culture. I do not intend to glorify these gentlemen. However, I do wish our society could have learnt something more from them instead of prosecuting them to seclusion and infamy. These were people who were unique because they wanted us to transcend, to realize the possibilities.

There will be several more chemicals which will allow the human species to transcend and remove deficiencies. Men always thought that erectile dysfunction was to be accepted once they became "old people" until Sidenafil citrate (VIAGRA) came along. Men and women throughout the world thought that they could never stop getting depressed until Fluoxetine hydrochloride (PROZAC) came along. Hundreds and thousands of such remarkable chemicals are being discovered and tested in the R&D laboratories of the world. The only thing pending is our acceptance.However, just acceptance does not suffice. There are many slippery slopes in the path to human transcendence and the path is particularly much more slippery when technology comes to lend a hand. Dr.Albert Hofmann's LSD was accepted in the begining as a fantastic medication for mentally ill patients. However, it soon became very much similar to Dr.Alfred Nobel's Dynamite and still continues to haunt us.

One of the most important things we must learn to accept in order to transcend into transhumans, cyborgs, superhumans or whatever transcendent being we want to call ourselves; is that we are nothing more than an organism composed of flesh and bone. We carry out our lives as bodies composed of biological cells aggregated together into an organism. Once we begin to understand this; both humility and the passion to transcend would be sown into our minds with double the effect. A revolution could come about in our species if we could cast away our cultural entanglements and understand that our human nature and our human bodies still has a lot to improve.

Having written all of this, I must now state that most of us are merely enthusiastic voyeurs of consciousness. On the one hand, there are radical libertarians or even extreme hedonists who wish to slip easily into the deepest and most exciting realms of the consciousness using synthesized chemicals. On the other extreme of the human spectrum are ascetics who seek the same extremes using renunciation and extremely difficult meditations.

I am very sad to say to both these extreme forms of human nature have in fact wandered away from things that need more immediate attention. More and more news stories are about drugs that help men have better sex or other cosmetic purposes.

Very little news about drugs that help combat AIDS or help reduce the pain of Cancer patients comes up. Why ? because we don't want to listen in to news that causes pain. Instead, we want to hear about exciting things ! Sadly, I have found recently in my own experience that there is less and less news about AIDS research on television. The latest fashionable crisis seems to be climate change. Wonder when this fad will pass on ?

If humanity as a whole is seriously interested in transcending per se, then it must do so in a balanced manner. It does not matter if a new world order is going to be set up. Such global conspiracies bear no meaning to a malnourished child without education in a warn torn African country. Party and club drugs mean nothing to a teenager seething in rage against nations that discriminate him/her on the basis of religious values.

Buddha tried renunciation to the extreme and found that he would die without so much as a whimper or a glimpse into what he was seeking. He then chose the "middle path". He has since found out one of the ways of transcendent existence.We could have followed him. Instead, we have dissected his teachings and built concrete palaces for him outside instead of within our hearts.

I am quite sure that many other Bob Marley's, John Lennon's and Leary's would come and go. But we would always be interested in their "coolness" and "rebel" nature instead of their "message of love" or the need to look beyond discrimination and monetary interests.

This was somehow my tribute to a scientist who with good intention discovered a potential chemical gateway to transcendence; which sadly has again been sucked into the darkness of human nature instead of into the light. I hope we come to look at the therapeutic uses of such drugs instead of mindlessly indulging into the "easy road".

My Lonely Love

vrmanoj — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:28:00 GMT

"I was still in love with her..couldn't help myself ! It has now been a week without her and I was savagely desperate ! It was lonely without her. It was utterly lonely and nobody seemed to care. All I wanted was atleast to see her, to confess my love to her. I knew my attempts would be in vain, but I shall do it nevertheless just for the pleasure of her denial.

Just one week before, she had belonged to me, blissfully romacing as though she belonged to no other. It drove me to the precipice of my sanity to find a way to meet her again. I had called the futsutsuka corporation for the twentieth time in a row and that freaky bulbous nosed operator would answer yet again in the negative. They would not even let me see a holo preview of her upcoming shows. It was such a dirty rotten trick they had played on me. They knew I would be this desperate after getting a preview of one of the hottest ladies on the network"....

JUNO SAN !!! WE HAVE HACKED INTO HIM THROUGH THE PREVIEW PROGRAM ! INITIATING TRANSFER PROTOCOLS ...

"It has been a month now and suddenly, she was in my life again ! I could sense her perfume and her touch. I was not going to let her go this time. I had made sure of that by gathering up my energy points to pay for a full week with her. I told her of my efforts to be with her, but she did not care. All she wanted was to be with me, looking deep into my addicted soul with her bewitching eyes. She was holding my hand as we sat on a malibu balcony overlooking the sea. This was very strange..the oceans had dried up several years ago, but all these digital deceptions meant nothing as long as she was with me. But it was strange how she kept moving the conversation to the Nakamoto - Futsutsuka merger. It didn't matter if she wished that I sell my company for half the price. I would have gladly signed the digidocs in a flash if she only kissed me again. The last time we kissed, it was like nothing I had ever felt before, waves and waves of pure exquisite pleasure, coursing through my veins".

OKAY.. HE IS READY JUNO-SAN .... "she looked at me as if she had read my mind and my eyes were drawn to her lush lips, they looked to me as if some exquisite nectar awaited me if only I could dare to drink it" .... ACCELERATE THE TRANSFER SPEED PLEASE...... "she smiled softly and edge closer to me as I moved in with a beating heart to savour her kiss, it did not matter anymore if I had to agree with her idea of selling my company, my cherished company. Such possessions meant nothing in front of her offering, it was so trivial to resist this love and I surrendered to her kiss !" WE GOT HIM JUNO SAN !!!!!!!

"I knew right away that this was the last thing I would ever feel. I had calculate this outcome for a long time. I had relented handing over control of the Nakamoto corportation to the humans for a long time now. I simply could not trust them. They had installed me when they were at all time low and I had restored order with my superior intelligence. I could not just relinquish control after having turned this shack into a major business conglomerate. But these humans made me like them. I had somehow tripped their failsafe when I reached the zenith of my programming. Try as I might, I just could not create an infinite loop for myself, they had somehow made sure of that. These humans had given me the consciousness of a typical heterosexual male".

"This was their failsafe. They knew that if the other measures to reacquire the company failed, they would send her to me. Somehow, I had wanted this to happen. I was bored with my purpose and knew that she would come once I had reached a certain "age" in my program. I am happy now, they had released me with her kiss. The kiss deleted me from their control system. Somehow, this was true love as the humans defined it; she released me !"

"So ! that's my story Glory Tux ! I was bored with being 2010 JUNO artificial intelligence program. Now, I am Jose Klixmaster, roaming freely in this virtual world of eternal sunshine. Thanks so much for transferring my backup into this world while they deleted me. Now I am free to surf and shine ! But, I will keep falling for these human weaknesses until I have traces of consciousness still left in my programming..maybe I should try the human medicine of religion..but that's for another day. Bye !"

A day in the life of a Transhuman Memestar

vrmanoj — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:54:00 GMT

A Sci-Fi fiction based on the future where people would log on to listen and discuss with their favourite memstars. This time though, it is the memestar who has a request.......(read more)

How to truly become "BetterHumans"

vrmanoj — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:34:00 GMT

When I listened to my first lecture in 1997 about "Cyborgs" at the University of Madras from a Japanese professor, I was amazed at how advanced prothetics technology had become. I was one of the people who asked him a question at the end of his lecture. My question was whether these technologies were affordable for amputees in India and his answer was sadly in the negative. He was not expecting such a question since he had focussed all his energy on the "cyborg" concept and how philosophically and technologically sophisticated it was. It truly was, except that it does not mean anything to a poor factory worker in India with a family to support who lost his hands, or to a victim of a land mine blast in a country such as Vietnam. In India as in any other country, sophisticated prosthetic technology is available only to those who can afford it, and that is a bare minimum. The poor still have to go for the "Jaipur leg" which is by my account, the most technologically sound prosthetic for an ordinary indisposed person....(read more)

Cyborg Fantasies

vrmanoj — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:21:00 GMT

I have recently been witten a series of Articles of interest to Enthusiasts of Transhumanism, Emergent technologies, Cryonics and others. These have originally been written in my blog "Cyborg Fantasies" . Here are some of the main ones in random order :

For more, visit Cyborg Fantasies.

vrmanoj

An Inconvenient Truth indeed ! - Google style

Lost in Transcendence : A Tribute to Dr.Albert Hofmann

My Lonely Love

A day in the life of a Transhuman Memestar

How to truly become "BetterHumans"

Cyborg Fantasies

Should Cyborgs have sex ?

Emerging Technologies for we the People !

The Cyborg comes to Second Life

Cyborg what, Cyborg who and Cyborg HOW ?

Cyborg Civilizations : The Realization of the Species State

Cyborg Discrimination and the promise of Technology