Singularitarians and musicians stage Madrid gathering

September 21, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica
book_voz_de_la_ciencia

The Voice of Science (credit: Aviador Dro)

A spectre is haunting the world — the Singularity. All the powers of the old world have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre — the Pope and the ayatollahs, the banks and the political parties, and “bioethicists” of both the right and the left. …

So says KurzweilAI transhumanist editor Giulio Prisco, who will give a talk Saturday (Sept. 22) at the La Voz De La Cienzia (The Voice of Science) conference in Madrid on “Un fantasma recorre el mundo: ¿Está cerca la Singularidad?” (“A spectre is haunting the world: Is the Singularity near?”).

Prisco will present “elephant in the room” harbingers of the Singularity — like three stories this week on KurzweilAI (Humanoid robot presents…, Blue Brain predicts… and Chemical brain preservation…) — and will comment on traditional political discourse, which is “frozen in obsolete political categories such as right and left,” he says.

Upwingers: orthogonal to right and left

“We are upwingers [futurist FM2030’s term] who wish to move above and beyond right and left, and overcome both the savage social darwinism of the right and the nanny-state dictatorship of the left. Let the ruling classes tremble at the Singularity. Humans 1.0 have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a universe to win.”

The conference will focus on cyborgs, nanotechnology and health, the Singularity, women in science, social networks, and “author 2.0.”

Electronic music band Aviador Dro and their The Voice of Science organization will present the conference, with the support of Fundación TelefónicaFundación Autor, and CSIC. The event will be streamed live on the Web at 10 am to 7 pm in Spain (Saturday 4 am to 1 pm EDT).

Aviador Dro