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Nature Debate

November 4, 2009

Nature debate at King's Place, where I appeared on a panel with Aubrey de Grey and Kevin Warwick

Human Enhancement

November 4, 2009

I gave two replies here at the Brocher Foundation, one to John Harris and a second to Paul Root Wolpe

Sport Enhancement (2009, Nov 9, Cambridge)

November 4, 2009

I'll be speaking at Cambridge University with Julian Savulescu.

Abandon Normal Devices

September 15, 2009

The AND festival of new cinema and digital culture kicks off next week and I'll be running the critical debates during the festival. Below is an overview of them, including biographies of our speakers. Lots of top notch contributors here, so try to get over to Liverpool for one of them. They are all free and open to everyone, but there is limited seating...

AND?

Dates: 24- 27 September, FACT Liverpool

Time: 12.00-1.30pm

Location: Chameleon (found at the rear entrance of FACT in Art House Square)

Featuring: CONTRACT: Charlie Beckett, James Wallman INFECT: Anders Sandberg, Dan Glaser; COMPETE: Natasha Vita-More, David James; DESIRE: Trudy Barber, Nina Wakeford

The AND? salons interrogate ideas about social justice, human rights and equality in a period of widespread, collective moral transgression. Our neglect of ethical considerations is intimately tied to subtle normalizing processes within social systems, which distract us from critical engagement. How are these devices imposed upon us and what systems of thought must we adopt to abandon them?

Using ethics as a broad foundation of thought, AND assesses the invisible social contracts we live by to open up questions integral to our time, from matters of biopolitics to our transition into a controlled and contested society, where our bodies, minds and communities are constantly under formal and informal devices of control. Split into four themes, Compete, Desire, Contract and Infect one fundamental question drives this inquiry: are we complicit in accepting normalization or do we seek to challenge?

Debates are Chaired by Professor Andy Miah, University of the West of Scotland & FACT Fellow

CONTRACT | Thursday 24 September

Social contracts exist in various guises, though perhaps our most celebrated is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which aspires to guarantee fundamental freedoms. It emerged during a period of globalizing humanitarian movements, where promoting justice, peace processes and cooperation were apparent. Yet, in the last two decades, there has been a widespread state-wide erosion of citizenship by media monitoring, matched only by our own complicity in digital self-surveillance. What are the consequences of these transformations for how we think about liberal democracy and the future of an increasingly digital Britain? Are we really global now?

Discussants: Charlie Beckett, James Wallman

INFECT | Friday 25 September

Traditionally seen as an impairment to normal functioning, AND reads disease as an overarching state of disruption to social order. Our desire to transcend our biology is inextricable from the complex ways in which our own resilience can be suddenly brought into question, as manifested by the ‘swine flu’ pandemic, itself a new(s) virus. These moments draw society back into a state of primitive vulnerabilities. They question whether society can be ‘fixed’ or whether utopian projects are all merely processes of normality maintenance. Are we persistently drawn back into a maligned condition of existence?

Discussants: Anders Sandberg, Daniel Glaser

COMPETE | Saturday 26 September

‘Faster, Higher Stronger’; Today, we compete with ourselves, through self-augmentation and manipulation. Our biological apparatus is in flux, vulnerable, yet being re-imagined through technology. Looking specifically at what it means to be able bodied or disabled we consider how society will look in an era of genetically modified athletes and surgically sculpted children.

Discussants: Natasha Vita-More, David James

DESIRE | Sunday 27 September

How will sex and sexuality look in 2020? In the 1990s, in an era when HIV and AIDS reached public attention, digital sex was described as the solution, as it promised to free us from the biological burden of disease and infection. But what is the state of our cybersexuality today? What will we desire and will sex be further sanitized in the future? Have digital liaisons become our primary mechanism through which to learn or mis-learn about sex?

Discussants: Trudy Barber, Nina Wakeford.

Biographies

Dr Trudy Barber created an immersive VR Sex environment in 1992 as part of her BA Fine Art studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art. She went on to gain her PhD at the University of Kent with her thesis on Computer Fetishism and Sexual Futurology. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Media at the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media, University of Portsmouth. Current research interests include: human-computer-interaction; new media development and content; consumer generated content; online social networking; sexuality and sexual subcultures; science fiction, cyberpunk and the future; immersive and non-immersive virtuality (such as Second Life and gaming), the convergence and customisation of communication technologies and issues surrounding theory and creative digital practice. Further information see:

http://www.port.ac.uk/research/ceisr/members/title,69965,en.html

Charlie Beckett is the founding Director of Polis, the journalism think-tank at the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics. He is author of "SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World" (Wiley-Blackwell 2008). He was a film-maker and programme editor at the BBC on programmes like Panorama, On The Record and News 24 and spent 8 years at ITN's Channel 4 News before joining the LSE in 2006. He broadcasts and writes regularly on media and politics in the UK and International media and blogs at www.charliebeckett.org and can be followed as CharlieBeckett on Twitter. He specialises in Media Change issues and the way that journalism is transformed by digital technologies and Web 2.0 communications into a more networked and participatory practice. Beckett's work at Polis has also dealt with media matters as diverse as Media and Development, Political Reporting, Celebrity journalism and Financial Media. The Polis website is www.polismedia.org

Dr Daniel Glaser is Head of Special Projects in public engagement at the Wellcome Trust. His team directs activities with young people inside and outside school, considers education policy, engages with the broadcast media and examines interactions between scientists and non-scientists of all sorts. His scientific background involves the use of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to examine how experience, prejudice and expectation alter the way we see the world. He comes from an unusual academic background having studied maths and then English literature at Cambridge, doing a masters in cognitive science at Sussex University, and graduate work in neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. In 2002 he was appointed ‘Scientist in Residence’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. This was the first appointment of its kind at an arts institution. In 2005 he was in the first cohort to receive a Cultural Leadership Award from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA). As well as presenting a television series for the BBC on how science really works, he has made numerous appearances on national and local radio and has featured in articles in daily newspapers. He co-chairs the Café Scientifique at the Photographers’ Gallery which is the London branch of a national series providing a new way for scientists to interact with a general public

Dr David James is a Senior Lecturer in Sports Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University. He leads the University’s MSc in sports engineering and maintains a wide range of research interests. David is a leading science communicator and was recently awarded a prestigious Fellowship in Public Engagement from the Royal Academy of Engineering. David has a mechanical engineering background with a PhD from the University of Sheffield that focused on modelling the complex bounce of a cricket ball. He has been privileged to work in a world leading research centre for nine years and has published extensively in a range of sports engineering areas. David’s team use fundamental research and the latest ‘cutting edge’ technologies to provide athletes with information and equipment to enhance their performance. Recent projects have included the development of elements of British Cycling’s highly successful Olympic track bike, and the creation of a complete mathematical model to explore the impact of technology on the game of tennis. David’s current research is focusing on the historical impact of technology in track and field events and the ethical considerations of an increasingly scientific sporting arena.

Professor Andy Miah, BA, MPhil, PhD, FRSA, is Chair in Ethics and Emerging Technologies in the Faculty of Business & Creative Industries at the University of the West of Scotland, Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, USA and Fellow at FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, UK. He is author of ‘Genetically Modified Athletes’ (2004 Routledge) and co-author with Dr Emma Rich of ‘The Medicalization of Cyberspace’ (2008, Routledge) and Editor of ‘Human Futures: Art in an Age of Uncertainty’ (2008, Liverpool University Press and FACT). For correspondence: email@andymiah.net

Dr Anders Sandberg is a researcher, science debater, futurist, transhumanist, and author. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Stockholm University in computational neuroscience, and is currently a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. Sandberg's research centres on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as on assessing the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. His recent contributions include work on cognitive enhancement [1] (methods, impacts, and policy analysis); a technical roadmap on whole brain emulation[2]; on neuroethics; and on global catastrophic risks, particularly on the question of how to take into account the subjective uncertainty in risk estimates of low-likelihood, high-consequence risk. He is well-known as a commentator and participant in the public debate about human enhancement internationally, as well as for his academic publications in neuroscience, ethics, and future studies. He is co-founder of and writer for the think tank Eudoxa. Between 1996 and 2000 he was Chairman of the Swedish Transhumanist Association. He was also the scientific producer for the neuroscience exhibition "Se Hjärnan!" ("Behold the Brain!"), organized by Swedish Travelling Exhibitions, the Swedish Research Council and the Knowledge Foundation, that was touring Sweden 2005–2006. In 2007 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University, working on the EU-funded ENHANCE project on the ethics of human enhancement.

Dr Nina Wakeford is a Reader in Sociology and an ESRC Research Fellow 2007-2010 at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her previous research projects include studies of internet cafes, women's discussions lists and the use of ethnography by new technology designers. Amongst her publications are papers on virtual methodologies, queer identities, digital communities and public internet access provision. Along with colleagues at INCITE she is interested in the ways in which collaborations can be forged between ethnographers and those from other disciplines, such as engineering and computer science. She is particularly concerned with the ways in which critical social and cultural theory can play a part in the design process, including the challenges which feminist and queer theories pose to collaborative projects between designers and sociologists, as well as technology studies.

Natasha Vita-More, media artist and theorist, is currently a Ph.D. Candidate, Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth. Her research concerns transformative human enhancement and radical life extension, focusing on converging nanotechnology, robotics, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive and neuro sciences within electronic-based design and biological art practices. Natasha's future human design “Primo Posthuman” has been featured in Wired, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Net Business, LA Weekly, and Village Voice. She has appeared numerous televised documentaries on the future, and exhibited at National Centre for Contemporary Arts Brooks Memorial Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art, Women In Video, Telluride Film Festival, and Moscow's "Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age". Natasha is a proponent of ethical means for human enhancement. She is published in Artifact, Technoetic Arts, D'ARS, Nanotechnology Perceptions, Annual Workshop on Geoethical Nanotechnology, Death and Anti-Death. She has a bi-monthly column in Nanotechnology Now, and Guest Editor of The Global Spiral. Formerly president of Extropy Institute, Natasha is Visiting Scholar at Twenty-First Century Medicine, Advisor for LifeBoat Foundation, Fellow of Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and has been a consultant to IBM on the future of human performance.

James Wallman was formerly Senior Trends Analyst at The Future Laboratory, where he consulted for companies such as Absolut, BMW and Coors, and appeared on radio alongside Dylan Jones discussing the future of men. With an MA in classics from Oxford University and an MA in journalism from the London College of Communication (LCC), he now writes the futurology column for tech magazine T3, making entertaining sense of complex topics such as the future of money, augmented reality and synthetic biology. Recent movements he’s analysed and described include the shift to bionic humans, the new prohibition era and the technosexual revolution – for T3, The Future Laboratory and GQ. He gathers the insights he comes across at CollectedIntelligence.net.

Electronic Art

August 30, 2009

This year, I was on the Executive Board for ISEA 2009 and chaired the closing keynote by Sadie Plant, along with a plenary session on the work of Tagny Duff, and an additional 5 sessions.

Human Enhancement

August 6, 2009

The Brocher Foundation, and the Universities of Oxford and Geneva are pleased to announce the Symposium:

Human Enhancement: What should be permitted? 20-21 October 2009, Brocher Centre, Geneva, Switzerland _____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Biomedical science is increasingly yielding technologies that can be used to enhance the capacities of healthy people, as well as to treat disease. This two-day workshop will aim to advance the debate on the ethics of human enhancement by considering

(1) What enhancements are likely to become possible?

(2) What enhancements will be ethically permissible?

(3) What enhancements should be legally permitted?

(4) What criteria should be used to answer 2 and 3?

THE PROGRAMME WILL INCLUDE SESSIONS ON:

Enhancement in sport

Life extension

Neuro-enhancement

Enhancement in general

The full list of speakers/respondents is: Eric Juengst, Paul Root Wolpe, Hank Greely, John Harris, Tom Murray, Gaia Barazzetti, Aubrey de Grey, Mike McNamee, Andy Miah, Stella Reiter-Theil, Ilina Singh, Astrid Stuckelberger, Sigmund Loland, Nicole Vincent, Massimo Reichlin, Ingmar Persson, Margareta Baddeley, Julian Savulescu, Alex Mauron, Bengt Kayser, Verner Moller, Tom Douglas, Norm Fost (TBC).

ORGANISERS

Julian Savulescu, Alexandre Mauron, Bengt Kayser, Verner Moller, Tom Douglas

TO ATTEND THE EVENT,

you are kindly requested to fill in the registration form and to send it back to the Brocher Foundation by mail, e-mail or fax before 5 October 2009. Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Fondation Brocher 471 rte d’Hermance, 1248 Hermance, Switzerland E-mail: scientificprog@brocher.ch Fax: 0041 22 751 93 91

Here are some notes from the day:

Enhancement in sport (chaired by Julian Savulescu, Oxford)

0930 – 1020: Anti-doping: Not the only matter of concern for elite sport

Bengt Kayser (Director, Institut des Sciences du Mouvement et de la Médecine du Sport, University of Geneva)

Discuses cases of enhancement use throughout life

- 21 med student uses ritalin

- 75 retired athlète

anti-doping leading to excessive surveillance in sport

more harm to society than it prevents

slippery slope

arg against doping – against rules

doping-like behaviour – conduite dopante

why anti-doping rule ?

- fair play, health, rôle model, spirit of sport

thèse reasons for anti-doping are flawed

what is the objective ?

- eradication?

- decrease prevalence?

- decrease prevalence in mass sport ?

- decrease in society ?

talk about GPS tracking

- to identify athlete’s whereabouts

for 2012 Olympic Games – condition of entry to search athletes

false negatives

false positives

why do people transges

new law in france (2008) – 5 yrs in prison and €75,000 for possession for trade

strict liability – presumption of guilt as reversal of justice

Article 6 (2) ECHR – presumed innocent until proven

Can anti-doping be successful?

- illusion

- shows signs of fantacism

side effects

- public belief that doping works

- hidden because illegal

- criminalization

- dangerous behaviour

increase in prevalence

International Olympic Academy

August 4, 2009

My lectures this year were broadly about applied ethical issues.

They encompassed new media, environmental ethics, bioethics and human rights.

Lecture 1: Applied Ethics and the Olympic Movement

[slideshare id=1742934&doc=lecture1-ethicsolympics2009-090720034551-phpapp01]

Lecture 2: New Media Ethics and the Olympic Movement

[slideshare id=1750199&doc=lecture2-newmediaandolympics2009-090721150315-phpapp02]

Lecture 3: Environmental Ethics: An Inconvenient Olympics?

[slideshare id=1752033&doc=lecture3-environmentalethicsaolympics2009-090722024423-phpapp01]

Lecture 4: Bioethics and the Olympic Games

[slideshare id=1761254&doc=lecture4-bioethicsolympics2009-090723165154-phpapp01]

Lecture 5: Human Rights and the Olympic Movement

[slideshare id=1761428&doc=lecture5-humanrightsolympics2009-090723173450-phpapp02]

KAIST

July 10, 2009

In August this year, I gave a lecture at KAIST in Daejeon on Ethical issues arising from nanotechnology. It was an awesome experience and there's such fantastic work happening there. If ever you have an opportunity visit the MIT of South Korea, then take it.

ICISTS-KAIST, one of the largest and most prestigious International Conference in Asia, would like to once again welcome you this summer. ICISTS-KAIST holds three workshops bound under our main theme of integration of science and technology into society. The delegates in each workshop will actively participate in team projects, debates, and various other programs after attending lectures by eminent orators. Q) What will the delegates do at ICISTS-KAIST 2009? #1. Sessions with prestigious lecturers We invite numerous great professionals from various fields of expertise. Last summer, we had the pleasure of welcoming Michael Pollitt, a twenty-seven-year-old CEO of the Shadow Robot Company; Steven Dubowsky, a professor at MIT; and Jim Dator, Director of the Hawaii Future Research Center, famous for being a futurist as well as being the partner of Alvin Toffler. You may look forward to meeting other great lecturers at ICISTS-KAIST 2009! #2. Integration of science and technology into society You will have gained an insightful opinion after having several in-depth discussions involving science and technology. The topics are carefully chosen from current science issues that have significant impact on our society. We guarantee that you will have broadened your view of the issues after the conference. #3. Interaction with an international student body At ICISTS-KAIST 2009, you will interact with students from almost 30 different countries, as well as Korean students from top universities in Korea, to form a world-wide human network. Social events include the Gala Night, the closing ceremony of ICISTS-KAIST when all delegates celebrate the end of our 4-day program. All delegates of the conference will share special memories and keep in touch even long after the close of the conference.

ICISTS-KAIST is an event in which you can develop an astute perspective and meet with international global leaders. In a world where science never ceases to undergo rapid development and affect society, students more educated and more concerned in the field of science and technology are needed. Attending lectures by eminent orators and interacting with other students, delegates will find what they were looking for at ICISTS-KAIST 2009.

This summer, ICISTS-KAIST 2009 awaits you!

<Goals of ICISTS-KAIST 2009> - Creating new points of view about current phenomena by communicating with professionals in various fields. - Offering opportunities for non-professionals to freely discuss about science and technology. - Formation of human networks among international students who have common interests. - Upbringing of global leaders with their unique visions on issues in science and technology.

<Conference Outline> 1. Name: ICISTS-KAIST 2009 2. Date: August 20th – 23rd (Orientation on August 19th), 2009 3. Place: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea 4. Contents: Workshop #1: Climate Change Workshop #2: Human-Computer Interaction Workshop #3: Nano-clinic (Choose one workshop among the three above) 5. Organized by: ICISTS Organizing Committee at KAIST 6. Target: University students around the world 7. Application: 1st application session: April 1st – May 16th, 2009 (discount in fees) 2nd application session: May 24th – June 30th, 2009 3rd application session: July 1st – July 31st, 2009

Please complete the application form and the essay on our homepage, http://www.icists.org

Our promotional brochures outlining the program can be found on: http://issuu.com/donggun/docs/p.b._2009_e (English) http://issuu.com/donggun/docs/p.b._2009_k (Korean) * If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at help@icists.org

Social Media

June 30, 2009

Social Media: Uses and Abuses Provisional Outline for the Day: Room: David Wilson Library, First floor, Seminar Room 1

PROGRAMME

10.00am Session on Twitter (for those who want to set up on their laptop phone) – Jennifer Jones & Jake Fudge

10.30am Registration opens (Tea and Coffee)

10.50am Housekeeping, explanation of one-tweet initiative and details of blog. Participants will be asked to tweet once after every session – to round up thoughts and summarize discussion. This can be tagged #usesandabuses so that we can track conversation throughout the day. Can be followed on twitterfall.com (large screen) – or using online tools. Speakers will be asked to pose the audience one question to take away from their talk and to be discussed within the breakout sessions. - Jennifer Jones

11.00am Welcome from Department of Media and Communications/University of Leicester Barrie Gunter

Iran Twitter 1 millionth word in eng language = web 2.0

11.15pm Gillian Youngs Title of talk: Social ‘Me’-dia: real-time connections and virtual identity

Gy4@le.ac.uk

Social media is not new. Sociospatial/geospatial realities

Beijing UN Women’s conference -

12.00pm PhD Panel : 15 mins x participant. Jin Shang Title of talk: Jennifer Jones Title of talk: Tia Azulay (DMU – MA Online Writing) Title of talk:

Each participant finishes the presentation with a question to ask audience, which can be discussed during the breakout session.

12.45pm Breakout session (which can continue whilst lunch is being served.) PhD panel will take a group each, alongside designated facilitators (to guide conversation) – discuss questions posed by speakers and summarise discussion by tweeting once

Jennifer Jones

Internet as an object vs social space Self-defined user

Creative Cuppa: Switch ON/OFF of ‘Digital Community’ Jin Shang

www.ceativecuppa.com

jks21@le.ac.uk

A Creative Writer Explores Social Media TiaTALK.WORDPRESS.COM www.Tiyal.com

Australiacouncil.gov/wriersguide/newwritinguniverse

Another perfec world – on 4od 1.00pm Lunch

5 of top 10 novels in japan was written on a cell phone

twitterature – redoing the classics twitterarti

1.45pm Andy Miah Title of talk: Details of talk: Q +A Question to ask audience for break session.

2.30pm Toby Moores Title of talk: Details of talk: Q+A Question to ask audience for break session.

Quick, audioboo, 12seconds

Reuters event cast - bring in voices of informed public, who had become separate from media/political/celebrity

we can capture the voice that we hadn’t heard before (public)

content and conversation coming together

this is what we should be doing:

aggregation mediation augmentation

3.15pm Breakout Session – discussion, leading into…

3.30pm Tea and Coffee

3.45pm Rachel Gibson Title of talk: Details of talk: Q+A: Question to ask audience for break session.

New Media and Barack Obama Before obama, feeling that not much change happening from perspective of politics

What did the Obama campaign do differently? - the obama website. Facebook, flickr, you tube, Mybarackobama.com website was the main thing - gave users control to affect

iphone application

Vote Different video on youtube

Components of campaign - hub: mybo - spokes: email, rss, sms, - 3rd party platform – blogosphere, social networking

reversal of professionalization – towards amateurization

Pew Internet and American Life 200 - campaign stats - 56% active online in relation to presidential campaign - 18% forward another’s commentary

4.30pm Panel Discussion: Leicester Politics and Social Media Ross Grant Jamie Potter Keith Perch (TBC)

5.10pm Break out session – speakers and facilitators

5.40pm Round up of tweets from one tweet iniciative, information about follow up.

6.00pm Close.

Human Futures Symposium (2008, Oct, FACT, Liverpool)

June 30, 2009

Human Futures symposium An Ethics of the Unknown Russell Blackford,

History of the concept of the future Current anxieties – corporations, environment

Emerging notions of the future – relationship to technology

Technology changing us – our capacities

Technology that mediates evolution - does it? Can it?

The uncertainty part is about this mediation

What is ethics? - politics and ethics of uncertainty

ethics: something about questions related to how live lives

t good life

politics is ethics writ large?

Ethics and politics of idea that technology can go inward and transform us

Should we respond with repugnance?

Leon Kass – cloning is repugnant

Bill McKibben –

Organization of society should not proscribe the good life

When laws are passed to ban technologies, enforces conception of t good that is at odds with liberal minded people – even if you agree with the rules

Social and public policy – going in the wrong directio

Reproductive cloning – currently not safe, so reasons to discourage

Is agreement with policy enough to justify the legal implementation of the good

There will be more issues of this kind

1997 Dolly

Justina Robson

Introduction to sci fi through Assimov, etc

Sci-fi was not for me as absorbed in ethics and morality – should and ought

Fiction of the future is – looking back in my life – are horror fictions – - eg. credit crunch,

characters – how affected by these horrors

most of my heroines are people who are booted into transgressions and must live with them - they learn to accept and use

first book – Silver Screen – AI and self-evolution – technological singularity

I felt compelled to answer these questions about machinic intell

What is life?

Dawkins level still – biological machines

Replicators struggling to survive

Meme replicators

Skating over the difficult scientific issues – which nobody knows how to resolve

Hard sci-fi fans like it to be realistic

Silver Screen - is psychologist to an AI

as ug ,developed a Turing Test

machine replicant of a human seemed most convincing

in the story the AI is a property of a large corporate body

becomes subject of HR case and is granted those rights

inherited ideas from the past – silver screen – cyberpunk tradition – William Gibson – action driven, often depressing –

Arthur C. Clarke – children enhanced b alien race – to join a hive mind being – whole of human race joins this hive mind – eastern philosophy pull in by western thinkers – we are one, unity, etc – moving to glowing - this repeats in my stories too

Technological transformation of individual and society

Octavia Butler – US sci fi writer – deeply rooted in personal experience - often involve alien encounter – could be shape-shifter, or – and quite uniquely – start cloning processes with humans, etc - not quite dystopian – but gruesome and disturbing

Healthy body integral to identity – when sick we feel v different – when I was v fit, world felt profoundly different – so imagine v signif changes – memory download – replication – complexity of decision making processes

ME: kasparove vs machine

Eternal Sunshine – rare story that ends up with absence of meaning

Ursula Leguin (sp?) - speculating on how could change if views of gender were changed - imagines gender neutrality of characters – human tries to relate to these people as one gender or not - aliens are some aspect of ourself we don’t know how to deal with

ME: Kass can’t deal with his inner alien

Whether sci-fi becomes part of emerging

Norman M. Klein

When I was here last I predicted a great crash Forgetting –

History of the present – from Foucault Use HF book to re-encounter the present The present began Sept/Oct 1973 Vatican to vegas – ended when iraq war started

The future of forgetting – I incorrectly predicted where we’re supposed to be going.

Liverpool is being erased – working class

It appears that 1990s - being put into place – trendy new Liverpool – erasing one thing tht would make Liverpool exicitnig now at a time where that era died yesterday

Where globalization is leading – term / Much will change / Master planning harder to do / Changes in cities / Inversion of public and private / will post-Obama world reverse it? / neo-liberal model erased master plan – transformed by George With Bush / imaginary 20th Century – how was it seen before it happened and what phantoms continue – woman in 1901 selects 4 men to seduce her and what happens to them and her – what versions of t future didn’t come into existence / how we are mis-preparing for this / urban planning - downtown LA – what are they meant to be in this new ecomony – in US prior down town no longer functions as downtown – not in downtown LA – gothic revival obsession – surburban fantasy of itself – good coffee, no tea –

ME: didn’t talk much about Asia

Scripted spaces – staged environments –

Incredible comedy on tragic scale

Something has reinvented identity –

Instead of becoming a machine, we become machinic

We lose consciousness of difference between machine and human.

Fantasize about the unreal – but when it happens we are surprised

Impact of media is slowing us down

Dominated by medication

Will need to: Design a public culture Be less cybernetic

Questions & Answers

Linda Candy: prediction – if not, then prescribe – I used to be a teacher – used to teach books like Brave New World, 1984, etc. looking back on the dystopan vision, we went into that somewhat mindless of what we were selling to these children. Looking forward – what would you prescribe for children to read –

Russell: Brave New World v immoral as it plays on people’ prejudices, because they are seen as bizarre – this should never be advised – I had an article in Quadrant – ‘who’s afraid of the Brave New World?’ – Bill Gibson’s ‘neuromancer’ – it’s not simply dystopian – it’s also alluring –

Norman: my students are rejecting utopian and dystopian

Justina: I was part of that generation – the presentation of the text is the crucial issue – but the bleak literature must have an opposition – today’s sci-fi are terrifying, etc, but also wonderful – the wonder is almost a religious experience

Norman: when world in shift, search for future and past. My students interested in parallel worlds. New Nietzsche. New freud – freud the novelist. Canon must be to invent point of origin.

Q: in future, will there be a canon – or centralized syllabus

Justina: canon’s always serve status quo.

Norman: postmodernism ended day before my birthday 1989. Canon is archive. Death of canon interesting. As long as it keeps dying, will remain interesting.

Encourage you to violate it.

Q Andy Sawyer, Sci fi foundation, Uni of Liverpool: alternatives could be those Justina mentioned. Interested in 3 comments: 1) Russell – future recent concept in history 2) sci-fi should and ought centrality 3) Norman – versions of future that never happened. As I look at it, 100yrs ago, vision of future, but now more anxious, ambiguous. No such thing as prediction of future –

Norman: don’t own the future. In western Europe – Americans thought they owned the future. Accidentally bought the future in atlantic alliance

Justina: ‘nothing dates like the future’ – great uneasiness

Russell: gursback continuum – Bill Gibson – that future didn't happen

Life After Death in the 21st Century

Chair: Ernest Edmonds

Technologies that shift our perception of ourselves – space, place & time Mental capabilities Re-thinking physical Linking with nature End of science etoy concerned with wrestling with implications of modern ICTs. Mission Eternity etoy.CORPORATION

etoy does its own dirty work – maintenance etc

does not rely on high-tech hardware

members donate space from their hardware

ME: environmental modelling project

No structural separation between different tasks required of etoy – engineer, lawyer, etc.

Project approaches impossible – eternal existence - condemned to never finding out success of – never reach eternity

Serious – not fake – obsessed with fact that we are not faking things – but also it’s not science or medicine – it is art.

The scientists also approach as an artwork.

We only used ‘pioneers’ as subjects

ME: what do you bring to that concept of pioneer

Mr. Keiser – micro film pioneer – businessman, actor

Collecting his life in an abstract way was more than just a documentary form - eg. counting up to his age – make mistakes, which are dramatic within the recording.

Shift festival in Basel - measured data in a performance

Self-portraits

M∝ SARCOPHAGUS

17k pixel led display

low res images - avoid mis-undertstandings. Remembering as much about forgetting as it is about storing data – resolutions change.

Art & Autonomy: Beyond the Human Paul Brown

Roger Malina said first paper on global warming publishd in 18XX

V little time left before planet loses capacity to sustain life

Humanity will devolve into hunter gatherers

ME: how imagine this scenary in context of an advanced intelligence?

I’m a ‘buddist

No worth preserving me Humaniy an illusion

What is worthwhile?

Life

As far as we know, we are only life in existence

Systems art – conceptual art

Jack Burnham – Beyond Modern Art (1968) - artist would create autonomous life, - based on Nicoolas Schoffer, CYSP-1 1056, Edward Innatowicz ‘Cybernetic Art’, Edward Ihnatowicz, SAM, 1968

DrawBot V1 - evolutionary robotics to evolve an automaton to create art

no way organic life can get into space, but these robust creatures can

life afte death is autonomous life forms

Linda Candy Life After death – hoping that there wasn’t one

1970s – age of uncertainty – devised BBC series - -first broadcast 1977 - Galbraith: contrast great certainties of the past with today’s uncertainty. Decline and subversion of great economic movements

UNSUSTAINABLE FUTURES?

Nicola triscott Wha will kill us off Nuclear technology Doomsday device Threats from emerging technology

Likelihood of extinction – difficulty to predict

Distraction by immediate problems

Die back – overpopulation

Who lives and who dies?

Space Is not the escape option

Most sci and technology not human centred at all

Near earth space - beyond why interesting?

Provoke thought about our planet

Ethical Futures

June 30, 2009

Ethical Futures London, RSA.

AGENDA 09.00 Registration

09.20 Audience seated in the Great Room

09.30 – 09.40 Welcome – Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA

09.40 - 10.10 Panel Discussion – Communicating the issues: enriching the dialogue Our perceptions about scientific advancements are influenced by information that we receive from a myriad of sources. Can we trust the quality of the information in the public domain? Is there a connection between this and our overwhelming negative response to some new and emerging technologies? Chair: Oliver Morton - Chief News & Features Editor, Nature Dr Anjana Ahuja – Features writer & columnist, The Times Cory Doctorow – Science fiction writer, journalist and blogger

10.10 – 10.20 Audience participation

10.20 – 10.30 Short story competition award presentation RSA short story competition on our vision of the future

10.30 – 11.00 Coffee break

Presentations An exploration of country experiences in developing ethics frameworks

11.00 – 12.20 Session chair: Dr Jonathan Carr-West – Programme Head, RSA

Japanese Bioethics and Enhancement– Prof Takao Takahashi

1. reflective equilibrium 2. enhancement debate in japan

history of bioethics in japan - from 1970s to 1980 beginning - 1969 – Japanese Asoc of Med Law - 1971 – principle of Informed Cnsent in Tokyo - 1971 – Mitsubishi --- Life Science Institute of Ideas

second period 1982 – first ethics committee 1983 – first IVF baby born in japan 1985 – mass media on bioethics 1988 – Japan Assoc of Bioethics

3rd period 1993- guidelines for gene therapy 1995 – first gene therapy 1997 – organ transplant aw 1999 – firs organ transplant from brain-dead person 2000 – human cloning law 2001 – guidelines for human genome research 2007 – guidelines for end of life care agenda: surrogacy, revision to organ transplant law

Taking Life and Death Seriously – Bioethics from Japan - Advances in Bioethics – vol.8, Elsevier

Reflective Equilibrium Moral judgements, moral intuition, custom Basic concepts basic principles Intermediate principles, law, guidelines (via Interpretation, abduction)

no level is absolute coherentism

subcom of human embryo research: structure of its argument

moral judgements, moral intuition, custom - safety donor rights, right to research, usefulness, disclosure

respect for human dignity - prohibition against dealing as only a method - prohibition against identity of human species

Current Sitn in Japan on Enhancement - public interest o not strong o prefer surrogate mother to designer baby o Ritalin – abuse, attract media o Cyborg – only in few tv progs o Doping – prob of sport • Make too much of safety - research interest o cannot be solved by Beauchamp and Childress’ principles or respect for dignity • search for not-borrowed original principles or, reinterpretation of existing principles - 16th Annual Assoc of Biethics Conf (2004) o first appearance at conf o agena: defn of enhancement, classicifcaitons o discussions of funl concepts (therapy, self, dignity, autonomy goodness) - 18th Ann Ass Conf (2006) o aenda: nature of life, dyanics of sci, economics - 19th Conf (2007) o brain enhancement, SSRI, genetics

Characs - general rather than specific - emphasis on other countries - re-examine fundamental concepts rather than applic of existent principles (philosophical dialogue) - reflective equilibrium - moral intuition to criticize or deduce fundamental concepts - solidarity

Enhancement and Japanese compatibility - Reason (right way) o Through history, customs, o Prudence (Yamato Gokoro), unselfish o Customs, bottom-up - Value as endurance – customs, conventions - Sympathy – natural bond of humans - Life – soc like living thing

General view - ambiguity of life o self-preservation, improve enviro o inevitability of mistakes, aging dath • negative, but is opposite o ideal of machine - human dignity basd on ambiguity of life o respect for other o sympathy for vulnerable, care for others

Structure of morality based on ambiguity of life - moral sentences, customs

Where is permissible range? - if A exceeds, then B as brake - permissible ranges - therapy is most famous - natural

Within Japan - ambiguity of life - weak self - sympathy - uncertainties of life - natur’s divine power - child like a god - abandonment (virtue, ideal, leads to enlightement)

Ethics and emerging technologies in America – Prof Nigel Cameron

3 accounts of emerging technology

nanotech discussion has led national nanotech intiative in US, by Clinton 2003 – 21st Century Nano R&D act

next fiscal year $1.4b for Institute

broader ethical implications AI ELSI Language in act not tied to funding trends

Controversy among people about slowness of funding, not just for ELSI but also safety, toxicology

On Friday, I was chairing conference at Press Club in Wasington

Initiatives - I’ve been involved with 5 federal workshops o Cogntivie enhancement o Nano and convergence - No evidence that these have fed to policy machine - But evidence fo pre-debate

This year, re-authorization process

Tendency to play down radical implics

Nat Ac of Sci - produced report - referred to 2 of 6 concerns, dismissed as sci fi - but a few month before, national lab convened workshop on cognitive enhancement

discouragement of public conversation

National Science foundation - lead in nano - convened series of conferences, sep from nano and nano and soc confs - converging technologies o 2003 – Roco and Bainbridge – NBIC doc • controversy, since occasion of European report • European response • Euro group said American approach not NBIC but of Human Nature and Machine nature • Europe seen as a policy doc, which was a misunderstanding • Object lesson in how not to do things, but also in how they were done

‘Nanoscale’ book by Cameron

Converging Technologies - suggests implics are World Peace - become one World brain - interpreted as policy positions of US government

3rd Narrative - US President’s Council on Bioethics - Estab for Cloning primarily - Beyond Therapy o Open ended discussion, saying enhancement is most imp q we face, bt also v difficult to come to terms with o Staff report, no policy recommendations or status - Readings doc – stories o Context for conversation - Most controversial for role in stem cell, though first formal decision was to disagree with Bush on therapeutic cloning. One reason for why policy role limited

These 3 strands on pre-debate

Observations: - predebate character shows difficulty in main-streaming which we are discussing today o public engagement strategy in Europe • 2 possible outcomes. • Keep as peripheral discussion • Priming pump for mainstreaming, bringing about • Partly why developing new think tank in US, since absent • Cinderella character of bioethics debates - Converging Technologies model interesting, branded by NSF. Europ group developed alternative term. Nano are converging o Convergence of humanities and social sciences - Global dimension o US representatin at various sitns. Eg. human cloning vs UK o US also on UNESCO’s Bioethics and Human Rights

What is the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies thinking about? Prof Julian Kinderlerer

What is the EGE? - set up in 1990s, by President of Commission to advise

anything on sci and technology thought to be o signif in Europe

deliberately consists of fewer members than states in euro, so represents indiv, rather than a country

v difficult to put into English views of colleagues, biggest problem

Directive XXXX.: patents on biotech and life - think about general, not indiv

Directive 2001/18 - release of GMOs into enviro and marketing. We are given role in thinking about general ethical issues

recent activity - Opinion 20: ICT implants o Indicated happy with use of enhancement technology to bring human individuals within normal range, but not further. So, could replace lost or malformed foot or heart. But to enhance an athlete to take part in Olympics, falls foul of ant-doping legislation. - Opinion 21 (2007): ethics of nanomedicine o Specifically didn’t talk about enhancement o Only modern nano on medicine. o Technology offers poss of new diagnostics and preventive o Concerned that moral duty to make affordable health care available to all on fair and equitable basis o Concerned that could improve only wealthy o Also looked at risks o Economist last week on manner of risks of nano have not been assessed properly. Not technology to do risk assessment. EU recognized o These are policy docs. EU decided now major investment in risk and ethics of converging technologies o Spending more on technology than risk and ethics o Recognizes that understanding and preventing risk has low priority in research world. o With risk research, public confidence in technology could be reduced in real or perceived dangers. Sometimes perceived greater danger. o Cosmetics concern, since don’t require much risk analysis. But are they dangerous? How far into skin do they permeate? • Will return to this issue - Opinion 22 (2007): human embryonic stem cells, under FP7 o US sitn permeates Europe. o Opinions of group, mirrored Europe o Germany, stem cell hardly committed. Not allowed to make or use stem cells unless country fro, which used is fully member of FP7 eg. if stem cell from Israel, can use in Germany. Italy, Ireland, Poland, cannot. o If brought to group, would never have had consensus o How bridge gap? • Chose to do so by political compromise • Worded FP7 carefully. • Identified variety of techniques t permit use of ESC in Europe without getting anybody XXX. • Eg. cant use stem cells that have been made except those in countries from FP7 – but cannot make them with money from FP7 • Group felt strongly that cells must only be for medical research, not for other purpose eg. replace animal exptn, so only direct medical purpose, not indirect • System: proposal to EU, then scientific eval, then ethics eval, then reps of EU states – purely political - Now, due to FDA, look at cloned animals for food o Caused signif probs o Mainly cattle o For dairy cattle, few bulls used worldwide o Average bull produces enough semen for 20-100,000 calfs per year o Don’t need so many bulls o So need system for not producing monoclonal popn o For meet cattle, have prairies whee cattle roam and bulls roam with them o Difficult to improve o So, produce clones of bulls and improve quality of bulls. o Don’t need in Europe, since don’t have same extent of roaming o We were worried by fact that pre-implantation, have problem. o During pregnancy, lose greater proportion of implanted, than for AID. o Large number die during life o Animal welfare, not safety, is main concern o Concern about WTO legal action for unfair barriers to trade o Need to look at more carefully, than system in US permits - Next, industrialized agriculture

We believe we will be asked about enhancement technology soon

Bioethics policy and debate: a UK perspective Hugh Whittall (Nuffield Council on Bioethics)

Previously civil servant – human tissue branch

Won’t speak on HE debate, since not much polic implics yet. Mainly academic

Gov and advisory bioethics - HGC - NRES - GIC - GTAC - APC

Regulatory authorities - HFEA - HTA

indep bodies - Nuffield - BMA Med Ethics Com

estab in 1991

indep body 2004 review: gov decided not to establish own bioethics committee

3 core functions - identify and define ethical qs, respond to public concern - make arrnagmenets for examining and reporting such questins to promote public understanding and discussion - policy focused

quarterly meetings of council 16 members new topics reveiwd at horizon scanning

topics - novel, complex, timely, allow NCOB to make an impact

working party estab to consider topic in detail

working parties

impact on public debate - media coveage - public events - education activities

working with Nuffield curriculum centre provide materials for use in schools science and citizenship curricula plays in schools

what about adults?

We don’t have a single ethical framework that in the UK we apply to ethics in public policy

Rather, we tend to identify values relevant to particular case

What language do we use to communicate?

Need a public engagement with ethics

Enhancement ok, but need o provide underlying language with which to engage on particulars

12.20 – 12.45 Audience participation

Is there a notion of what a human being is that informs your debates?

Hugh: no. unfair to pitch to our org.

Prof Takahashi: idea of human dignity not complete. Right to self determination must be based on concept of life, not human being. What is life frames our approach.

Nigel: we operate on assumption that we know what human is, even if cannot define. At functional level, this is a non-subject. Notions of courage, etc – virtue – heart of what it means to be human. Threat is technological fix that make unnecessary.

Julian: priest and rabbi asked when life began: priest said moment of conception, rabbi said when dog dies and kids leave home. Between I and polish group on group, we are completely different. Do not wish to remove these differences. Harmonization in defining human would lose a great deal. Eg. live in south afria ecause wanted to go to non-western soc, to see what they are acing. Concept of IP presumes indiv autonomy. But not present in other cultres. Should we harmonize or understand differences?

Q: thought Hugh Whittel’s idea of having a language is fundamental. Practice of defiing values is key to international affairs, consensus and good governance. Prob of defining values is need to differentiate between amount of value ascribed by indiv to a partic quality. Science of thinking and eval that have not establishd for thinking about this prob.

Q: religious recognition outside of western?

Hugh: must measure values that come into conflict. If look at other cultures, will help.

Prof Takahashi:

Nigel: how get public discussion between different types of people.

12.45 – 13.45 Lunch

13.45 – 13.50 Book launch

Presentations Current research is posing difficult questions about our future at both the individual and societal levels. This session highlights some of the work and implications at the forefront of science.

13.50 15.20 Session chair: Prof Igor Aleksander – Prof of Artificial Intelligence Humanoid Robotics, Culture and Society of Japan Prof Atsuo Takanishi

Late prof ichiro kato WABOT-1 (1973) WASEDA-Gifu Wabian-2R - Hitachi, walker for elserly and handicapped - For designing new prosthetic

Biped Robot that can carry a human – WL-16 Practical Robotic Solutions, TMSUK

Emotion Expression Robot

EYE-Chan - ROBOCASA WK-16

Deformable Face Robot – Solid Works

Flutist Robot for Simulating - lung capacity similar to humanresources@paisley.ac.uk

Vocal Humanoid - WT-5 o High speed-camera o Vocal cord vibration o Kotaro Fukui team

AICHI EXPO 05 - biggest robotic event in Japan

Toyota robots SONY HONDA, MITI,

Historical Backgrounds

Simplified history o japan In 1600s-1867 – Edo Era - cultural explosion - Japan’s renaissance - Karakuri, sushi, manga, ukiyo-e, jabuki, jaiu bonsai, tea cer - Karakuri puppels, in 17th C

Center of Education in Edo Era: Terakoya School

Admiral Perry - expected japan would take over technology from other countries

populatization of Japanese mathematics - Jinkoki, Sangau - Pii and proof of geometry, in Japanese templese, 2-300 yrs ago

Astro Boy (1951) manga Iron Man the 28th (1956)

Left and right brain function varies in part between western and asia

Onomatopeia - 12000 in japanese, 3000 in English requiem service for broken needles in japan - technology can have soul – need to protect

The ethical implications of automated killers: Will robots take over the battlefield and law enforcement in the 21st century? Prof Noel Sharkey

Unded by research council on issues of public concern

Recurrent issue from journalists is robotics and military

Link to police service

Worldwide stock of 6m serice, personal and industraial robogs Prices falling – 80% cheaper in 2006 than in 1990

Numbers et to rise

US Future combat systems project spending to exceed $230b - massive and realistic plans to develop unmanned vehicles to strike form the air, under sea, and on land - - congress set a goal on 2001 for one third of operational ground combat vehicles unmanned by 2015

4000 ground based robots in iraq

mostly Explosive Ordinance Deployment

robots as extensions of human fighters human operators control

UCAV – semi-autonomous Deployed in iraq MQ-1 predator – hellfires USAF

Boeing X45A X47B Pegasus

Robots

US National Research council ‘Navy and Marine Corps…exploit …autonomous vehicles’

Cheaper to manufacture Require less support personnel Perform better

Want a single soldier to initiate large scale robot attack from air and on ground

Big IF - autonomous systems can identify legality, then - let men target men - let machines target machines

AI Myth

Grave doubts - robots not bright enough to be called stupid

many subtle distinctions to be made in war

cold lead to chaotic or uncontrollable behav

robots do not have t discriminative ability required

Just War Theory - fully moral and ethically approp use of mass political violence - extends back to st augusiine and Aquinas - basis for laws of war enshrined in Geneva and hague conventions

three main parts - Jus ad bellum – justifcaiton for waging war - Jus in bello – conditions of just war o Discrimination o Proportionality o No means o Responsibility

The Artificial Conscience - US army funding project an ethical robot soldier - Could such a device be more ethical than humans because are not emotional - Idea is to provide robot with set of ethical rules to apply in combat situations

Won solve prob of discrim and control - used to ally political opposition

John Ford ‘Obliteration’ - could not possibly protect all innocents in war

answer was to go for technological solution. Prob of allocating responsibility for mishps to machines

UK Government on Robot ethics - horizon scanning doc - robots for reproduction, improve themselves, gain AI - granted legal rights and have citizen responsibilities o voting, paying taxes, compulsory military service

Robot Arms Race - once technology developed, everyone will want it - DARPA annual grand challenge - Singapore, JUK and South Africa started - Israel and South Korea have robot border guards

UCAV Russian Scat nEUROn by SAAB

Conclusion - if cant guarantee discrim with combatants and innocents, should not use - allocating responsibility for killing innnocents - eliminating ‘body bag’ politics - can a war be just with no danger to one side - responsibility as engineers is to be honest about AI

New York Times, 1950 - ‘…we will need a robot machine commission to function somewhat like our present Atomic Energy Commission...’

Neuroethical issues of cognitive enhancement Prof Barbara Sahakian

‘boosting your brain power’ BMA publication

do we need cognitive enhancement? - Alzheimer’s disease - Biggest risk factor, age - Each year, 39,400 new cases - Current cost of long term care for dementia is £4.6b, expected to rise to £10.9b by 2031 - Number of people rise from 224000 in 1998 to 365000 in 201

Schizophrenia - 23m people worldwide - even small improvements in cognitive fn could help patients make transition to independent living

ADHD - 4-10% of all children worldwide affective, most prevalent neuropsychiatric disorder

Ritalin ok for 60% of children

Neuroprosthetics for cognition

Pharmacological possibilities

Foresight – Brain Sciences and Addiction

Use of stimulants by students - 16% students on some collage campuses in USA - See PHOTO

Modafinil improves planning in healthy volunteers

Athlete Kelly White banned

Rights and wrongs of cognitive enhancement in healthy people - inceasd performance (boh pleasurable and competitive activites) - modafinil o Emory University, USA

Questionnaire by Sahakian and Morein-Zamir, 2007

Military, shift workers, air traffic control, school pupils

Normalization removal of nfair disparity in shcooling

Wrongs - long-term side effect

Ecstasy and depression - Roiser et al Am J Psychiatry, 2005, 162(3), 609-612

Neuroethics socie Cyborgs…… the future for humans? Prof Kevin Warwick

Using technology to assist with problems - parkinson’s disease, DBS

15.20 – 15.40 Audience participation

15.40 – 16.05 Tea

16.05 -16. 30 Panel Discussion – Defining the boundaries to human enhancement: the way forward Session chair: Prof Andrew George Dr Andy Miah Prof Nigel Cameron

My Intervention: Boundaries PPT on Biocultural Capital

Types of boundaries - conceptual (defns, aesthetic, cultural, discourse) practical (technical, regulatory, legal, intergovernmental)

Focus on conceptual - defining enhancements – accumulation of biocultural capital - EGE Prof outlined egs that were, in my view, sill therapeutic rather than enhancing - nor Kevin’s Parkinson’s disease patient - profound reductionism of transhumanism - reduction of ethics to ‘consumption of ethics’ - trust – crisis of expertise – PEWE indicative of - how dowe know it’s genuine - achieving gender equality in debates about enhancement technology

16.30 – 16.45 Audience participation

16.45 - 16.50 Close – Prof Bruce Lloyd

Followed by Reception in the Vaults

American College of Sports Medicine (2006, May, Denver)

June 30, 2009

ACSM Eduacting Physicians to Combat Doping: a key step in the fight Dr Alain Garnier, WADA Medical Director

Not responsibility to educate physician, not funds. But to educate.

What is dopng for physicians? - ethical perspective – cheating - juridicial perspective – rules violation - medical perspective – therapeutic use in intentionally diverted into misues or abuse by athlete or entourage

athlete needs a neutral and well informed advisor

program for physician: proposed content - introduction: rationale to ban doping - the reality of doping – comeporary doping practices - athletic entouerage – responsibilities - vulnerability – critical periods, personalities at risk - alternatives to doping – training and nutrition - statute of a drug - prhiobted list and TUE - practical issues

aims of program - to achieve common medical aproacht in sport medcicine (harmoniation/best practices) - to explain t content of the list and TUE process - encourage use of non prohibited alternatives - to share exp and knowl

advisor and confidante an advocate for t health of the athlete not providing help in overtaing or supra physio

fight against doping is part of physicians role

Simulating Altitude Training Don McKenzie, UBC, Canada

Principles Does it work What are the effects? Is it safe? What’s new?

Simulated altitude environments - hypobaric chambers - normobaric hypoxic systems

when go to altitude, invoke changes across oxoygen cascade

Townsend, N E et al JAP 93, 1498-1505, 2002 - from AIS study

Voster, Glan, E et al jP 567(20) 689-699, 2005.

Sheel, A With et al JAP, 100: 1204-1209, 2006.

Lusina S et al, J Physio, (submitted 2006) - 1hr a day, 12 days, signify upregulation

thus, when exposed to chamber, more than sleep happens

Periodic Breathing in sleep - intermittent hypoxemia - periodic arousals - loss of total, slow wave and REM sleep - excessive daytime sleepiness - carryover of sympathoexitation?\ - vascular vasoconstriction during ex?

T Kinsmane, et al JAP, 92, 2114-2118, 2002

Brugniaux, JV ert al JAP, 100: 203-211, 2006

Katayama, K. et al, High Alt Med Biol, 4: 291-304, 2003

Safety - companies say that they are safe.

What’s newL: the ‘normobaric oxygen paradox’

Balestra, c et al JAP 100: 512-518, 2006.

Does it work? - probably - Levine, etc suggest dose response - Periodization schedule? - Nutrition - Training?

Placebo effect?

Effects? - alters chemosensitivity/respoiratory control - alters cardiovascular regulation - inc sympathetic ns activity - alters sleep pattern - potentiation of training post exposure

what do I think? - it’s a training tool - complex integrate physiology - as effective as t scientist, coach and athlete who use it - demonstrable, signif, pyhysio effects, some of which may influence performance

The Ethics of Altitude Trianign D.C. Malloy, University of Regina, Canada

Training - ‘the basic goal of training is to use a variety of external stimuli (ex, environment, ..’ (Burke,2006) - outcome is improved performance

Ethical Training – theory and practice

What is ethical traiiung? – that which results in the best performance? (Teleology – the good) That which employs acceptable means? (Deontology – the right) That which is genuine to the indiv ontologically and physiologically? (existential – the authentic)

The Good: performance outcomes - goodness of act measured by outcome in producing ‘pleasure’ - does act avoid pain?

The Right: deontology - the right o divine o social contract • does training regime X satisfy critieria set by govern bodies? • Often where debate ends in sport o intuitive – how we reason.

The Authentic: existential good and bad faith - authentic physiologiy - authentic philosophy - existential – a philosophy of genuineness, freedom and responsibility

adaptation of t human body to a stimulus that does not exceed genetical optential moving t body outside its normal (geuine) physio range - tf, training regime is authentic if introduces substant that does not bypass training stimulus or beyond range - eg. Altitude training and nitrogen tents stim prodn of epo within indiv’s normal physio range/genetic potential

inauthentic physio - adaptation of t human body tro stimulus that EXCEEDs genetic potential

inauthentic physiology training

authentic philosophy - good faith – I am what I am becoming - bad faith – a way of estalibhins that I am not nwhat I am

Can athlete look in mirror and say ‘this is me’

Is this making me someone I’m not?

Ethical Decision Tree

Questions and Answers

Question: WADA talks about banning hypoxic, are they concenred about ethics or long term effects?

Olivier: must take into account fact that some athletes try to make those devices.

Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (2006, May, Stanford Law School)

June 30, 2009

Stanford Law School Ron Bailey, Reason Magazine

Designer babies PGD Sex selection

Consent of unborn concern - but nobody has consent over birth

‘much against my will’

ME: Is action done against those who cannot exercise will, an affront to it.

X-men enhanced vs naturals

People oft say what will happen to equality - Bill McKibben: declaration of independence cant withstand equality - Fukuyama:

Are people equal? - nothing self-evident about this.

Political equality idea arise from enlightenment that nobody has truth

Political equality has never rested on playing to human biology

George Annas: ‘the new species or Posthuman will likely view the…. As …. The normals on the other hand may view the posthumans as….potential for genocide….makes weapons of mass desutrction’

Remind Annas that enlightenment people of tolerance.

Political liberalism is already answer

David DeGrazia - are any X inviolable

no reason

expanding healthy human life spans

Erik Davis Author of ‘Techgnosis’

Not going to talk about normative concerns. Not interested in debate about enhancement

Interested to draw a space where all will be engaged in a way that is difficult, confusing, enlightening, etc.

‘the Posthuman condition’

attempt to explain an existential view of human acxtion, etc.

‘being unto death’ Heidegger. - maybe we can change this now

whether or not I accept Ron’s arguments, I have to live in possibility that death as I imagine it is not going to work out that way

another aspect of human condition that doesn’t change: choice - will still be faced with decisions

transhuman or poshuman?

I use post to invoke postmodern

One element of postmodern that has resonance: loss of grand narratives

Posthuman condition

The Matrix ‘red’ or ‘blue’ pill - choices

Why does morpheus offer a ‘pill’

Pharmacology offers way of grappling with Posthuman condition

Funl mistake that proenhanement make sometimes – confusing ends and means - richness of means - ie. End is more happiness, learn to live with my anxiety. I can take a pill or try something more tedius, like yoga, etc.

technologies that enhance abiliy to inquiry about Posthuman.

Hope we never lose process of inquiry when pursue more psychology good

Disenchantment of self and reimagining it

William Hurlbut New paradigm in medicine Gaylin: physician as nature’s assistant – old paradigm Now freedom from natural life processes

If enhancement an increase then need guidance

Within frame of natural limitations, desire serve as purposeful passions

Gordon Lightfoot: think its sin when I think I’m winning when I’m losing again.

Without considerable caution, might think we’re winning when we’re losing.

Conclusion: all enhancement might more rightly be recognised as diminishments. Might not mean that not useful

Need some sense of relationship between biotech and natural world – this relates to human good

Need ustdg and wisdom/character

Need to enhance capacity for wisdom and character

ME: my prob is that I don’t like the tone of any of these speakers

‘rising tide of freedom and peril’

need to step back into something rooted more in scientific evidence reflect on where we’ve come from be realistic about scientific meaning and reaslism of what we’re saying doubt much of what’s been referenced already is going to be scientifically feasible

matter, mechanism and meaning

fragile flexibility = life

marvel of life forms – specifically human

balance of body and being

‘embodied intelligent freedom’

reflect on this before seeking posthumans

we might be the ultimate formatio

plato: animals as degraded humans with specific functions

body is not equipment

are there no uses of enhancements? No. surely there are

surgeon using betablocker to steady hand. But you do these with a recognition that a higher good has been served.

Enhancement is a specialisation that XXXX with the world, but occassionalyl undergo alterations

What is a serious purpose?

Not too specific things. Not pleasure. Not competition.

If pleasure, then reduce to free-play – aesthetics of self. Using biologically driven resources to just enjoy. Nothing wrong with that, but deracinated is a great danger. And is trivialising, Nietzsche…

Competitive advantage seeking. Used for selfish ambition. Disrupts our deepest meaning.

We are creatures of the earth

Human word derives from earth

Humility also same root.

Be humble.

Questions and Answers

John Schlender, Arizona State Uni

John: are you asking whether I would give…..

John S: any therepy that can cure age related diseases and extend life span.

John: do I favour radical interventions in human life to increase life span? Very cautious, since level of operation would be disruptive to other purposes of human life. Rennard Hayflick says the reason we age is because we have complex biological systems which ultimately canot repair. Can we make magic bullet interventions. I don’t think so. We already are a specieis with an enhanced life span.rhesus macats already selected for longevity. Not convinced it will be easy. If there is a way consistent with human agency that enhances, then great. Not at cost of other phases of life.

Carl Jacksy, Uni of Washington: funl conservatism that all panels express. ‘adapt to the world’ ‘understanding’. If really about ethics and morality,not posthumanism, but postcapitalism. Never once has discussion fo changing political system. Issue of ludism – social structures need to change. Ultimatel ethical desirada is ecosystem that is 100% symbiotic and 0% parasidic. Marcuse: potential of human race not to dominate nature but transcend struggle for survival. People talk about life extneions as xXX, but majority of species on earth are physically immortal.

Erik: I was not calling for radical political transformation, buit invioking drugs as model, was to raise issue of consumerism, capital, etc. people here have a good sense of how decisions in pharma are driven by capital as well as ethics. But I don’t call for things, nor believe they are around the corner. But invoke impossibility of escaping these questions.

Ron: put in a good word for capitalism. Only social system that allows people to get above natural tate of poverty.

Jean Pierre de XX, Paris and Stanford Uni: respond to Erik Davis – vantage point of history of philosophy. If I heard correct, human condition defined by limitations of human possibilities. I think exactly contrary. Human condition when limits of human life strated to be seen not as lack, but as source of meaning. Kant. Heideggerian notion of being unto death. Recall Satre rejoinder to Heidegger: even if became immoral would remain finite, since condemned to be XXXX, to be free is to choose. The more open possibilities, the more finite – chnoice implies renouncing openness. Equation between choice and possiblitiy to overcome finiteness is dubious. If following satre, of course.

ME: if I’m hnst, I should even be speaking

Nick Bostrom: what are the costs of the surgeon using beta blockers.

Bill: when using a drug, effecting range of responses in body. either body accommodate, or provoke imbalance. Foundation of experience – don’t do interventions unless you need to do them. Not convinced that enhancements will effect desired ends or even reasonably feasible. What is evidence that Posthuman are better? There are obviously conditions that need counterbalancing, but what is the goal?

Ron: who is the we? Societal ‘we’ is very totalitarian. You doubt feasibility, so let us try. Don’t stop now. Humanity is terrible at foresight. Never been good at it.\

Wyre Sententia: choice and freedom. I know ron holds to idea of political liberalism. Potential of Erik’s discussion of grand and small narratives. Who will constrain? For what purpose? Douglas Ruskkoff, echoing Satre: defined more by technologies we choose not to use, rather than those that we do.

Erik: I know an electronic musician. I play acoustic guitar and is quite limited machine in formal characteristics. But if electronic musician today can spend limited mony and have range of capacities.

Bill: I do think there are some things we should tell our citizens that there are some things they can’t do. Germ-line intevention is a very bad idea.

Ron: but probably not in 50 years? Eugenics whether allow or restrict. Enhanced lives are not goalless. Eduardo Kac from Brasil, biotech artist – art gene put into e coli, then art gene in a dish and people could.

Claude XXX, Palo Alto: are you somewhat concerned that all these new powers could lead to a nightmare scenario, dictatorship wher government make decisions for people.

Ron: It has to be a concern. Surveillance technologies.

Erik: proximity to catastrophe is relevant. So many nightmare scenarios though.

XXX: what benefits would acrrue form enhancements. Previously, I evaluated ed programmes for disadvantaged. Yet after spending millions, effects not good. If I were parent of a kid, seems sad to me that many kids that have 2 strikes against them because they’ve lost in genetic lottery. How wonderful if could afford choice to do something about that. This is a good application of microeugenic choice.

Bill: what did you have in mind? Predesigning child to be smarter?

XXX: parent in annual wellness exam, might mention will have a child, and physician says we can evaluate eggs to see if there are eggs or sperm that are normal with regard to intelligence and we can allow you to select.

Bill: so, PGD

XXX: yes, but not just morphological, but actually inspection of genome.

Bill: what about improving genome in progress?

XXX: not sure.

Bill: so, selecting, rather than enhancing?

XXX: yes, first, not sure second.

Bill: so what is intelligence? We have standardised talent recognition. Many people who cant read well are more likely to be in jail than others. People on death row, many are dyslexics. So select out dyslexia? Well maybe, but maybe physiological – tendency to ear ache in early life. Trouble with this is that even if goal acceptable, what goes into intelligence is complex. Hundreds of gene. Multitrait loci. No one gene has 1-2% contribution of a given trait like intelligence. To improve must select complex number to select – eg 1,200 embryos. What’s the goal? So they can all go to Stanford!?

Ron: what you’re hoping for will be achiceved by neuropharmacology before embryo selection. People in memory field .

Bill: would these be drugs they take all the time?

Ron: XXX

Bill ??: how draw line between therapy and enhancement. Stronger immune systems. Bill, in your talk you spoke of Lennard Hayflick of ageing as breakdown of repair. How draw line? If you don’t draw the line, are you into enhancement?

Bill: I’m not a bioconservative. I’m from California. But conservation is a good word, when there is something worth conserving. Medicine is conservative. First principle ‘do no harm’. But first principle should be ‘stay away from docctors’, one in 6 is iatrogenic ‘caused by doc’. If non-invasive that doesn’t harm, I wouldn’t be against, but sceptical. Immune system is a balance – cant work out how to enhance it. We know of deficiencies. But with regard to gene thing, we should make it clear that genetic germline enhancements- genes are not legos. Every system we care about – beauty, intelligence- complex interactions of genes. If really try to bring about scenario, will need cloned human embryos and alter one at a time. Otherwise, natural selection could not predict. Multi body problem raised to nothing degree. This will all amount to experiments on human beings and don’t think we have entitlement to do that.

Ron: with regard to germline, they wont work now. Bioinformatics might produce enough info to simulate genome, interactions of proteins, etc.

Bill: let me correct that. Concordance of identical twins only 18% higher than fraternal. Misimpression that genes are determinate. The bioinformatics prob is so complex that cant do without known genome – so need cloned humans.we have false impressions about how genes work based on genetic diseae. But these are usually missing links in chain, but not just one trait, we just don’t analyse it that way in popular level. Polygenic inheritance means one gene affects many traits. I doubt bioinformatics will solve.

James, Sanfransciso: gentlemen from Washintgon answer question about where this is going – symbiotic rather than parasitic. Ref back to Matrix, agent compared human beings to a virus, uising up resources. Best estimates that lifeblood of oil runs out in a couple of decades. So, question: since 40years since outlaw of psychedelics, so what hindsight of that decision.

Ron: affront of human freedom. Stop drug war and help people who go too far.

YXXXX, Stanford student: ‘we humans might be highest form of physical form’. Something Nick Bostrom wrote on ‘reversal test’. Unlikelt in grand scheme that we are at a local optimum in this point in history. How respond to reversal test.

Bill: human beings are a marvel of balanced capacities. Hands as tool of tools. We could do better. Owls see better at night. But enhancing one thing upsets balance. I think about danger of being torn between arrogance and anxious striving. When ask what really makes people better? My thoughts aren’t something technological. But who is happiest? St Francis: recognised of natural value. Became weak to become strong. French theologian: man can recover true life…certain voluntary poverty is the condition for possessing the world in a way that will not reduce it to ashes.

Erik: I’m a melancholic Posthuman. I recog validity of human ways. Media.

ME: the charge of responsibility and its bearing on enhancement decisions.

Ron: we do have grand narratives: ending of poverty, suffering, etc.

Saturday

Enhancement and Human Rights Session

Why Human Rights are a problem for enhancement Patrick Hopkins

Right almost gives no carte blanche to harm others. Not absolute Alleged right to enhancement in appeal to autonomy no greater appeal than appeal to damgage oneself.

Extreme specificity of contemporary autonomy claims weaken it. Previously, autonomy meant something broader. In deontology, rights recognised some moral laws Autonomy in consequentialist meant that when authorities decided for us, they often got it wrong In none of these views was autonomy content free Autonomy required rationality. So, irrational choices had no validity. Autonomy = self lawed, not no lawed

How is enhancement reasonably way of pursuing interests.

Pro-enhancement crowd must ask what they want from enhancement. If power, gratification, etc, then less than human, not more.

To defend as a right, must be worthwhile, dignified and noble.

Chris Gray Cyborg technology had horrible possibility of taking what rights we have. Must make sure we don’t lose rights we currently enjoy. V good to have a philosophical understanding – or epistemological – but what’s really imp is how you have power in the world. Fact that we have rights now is that many people struggled for them.

Political systems are systems of discourse. Discourse of rights is a metarule Imp we mobiles this to keep freedom

Steve Mann –‘Digital Futures..’

Kevin Warwick says he’s a cyborg, but he isn’t.

Before right to enhance, right as normal citizen.

Epistemological – any imp question need this – how do you know what you know?

In this case, assumes what you need

Manfred Clynes

Goedl – showed mathematics was incomplete and/or imperfect

Church-turing thesis - incompetent

Understand human culture as a discourse. - change discourse

smartest thing in the world is a community, much smarter than any individual

dialetic – thesis, antithesis, new synthesis

Nigel Cameron Associate Dean, Chicago College of Law

Author of ‘The NewMedicine’ And ‘Human Dignity in the Biotech Century’

(From Edinburgh in Scotland)

caveats of answers

identity complex questions

putative enhancement: proportionality enhancement

recog prob of drawing lines –eg between therapy and enhancement

nobody claims it is easy to draw such lines

role of policy inthis debate is complex naïve freedom of science argument

IRBs make life difficilt

Science constrained by social norms

A defining discussion about human future not easy to resolve.

Enhancement debates are surrogate to discussions about value of human – what is the good life?

This will be the dominating theme of the 21st century.

Questions and Answers

Positive and negative right distinc? David Calvery, Arizona State:

Wesley Smith, Weekly Standard: for Dr Gray:

GraY: proliferation of transhumans. May have its own problems.

Question: are human limits a threshold or a fn of technology and culture?

Gray: universal machine faces same problem. Infiinitte computer cannot understand world.

Carl chansky: human race has been involved in enhancement since time immemorial. Two phases: enhancement of muscular abilities. Now this is closed. We have infinitised our musculature.

Nigel: Much less concerned about steroids

Kirsten Rabe Smolensky

Assume intervention before birth Assume 2: germline not somatic Assume3: safe enough Assume4: intervention before born, resulting in outcome that they dislike and want to sue parents.

Eg. Superior athletic ability given and wanted superior musical ability.

Current state of tort law makes v unlikely that child could bring such a case

Tort Wrongful birth/death

Two potential claims

Wrongful life/birth: Least likely, but worth mention Current law:

Claim: you didn’t screen me when in womb and I have this condition because of that.

Generally not recognised in court, since would require court to accept better off dead than with condition.

Court disagrees.

Alternative: negligence claim.

Ot bring: Need duty of care. Breach of duty Breach must be proximate cause

Question of whether we owe foetus duty of care?

If someone hits pregnant woman and injures child, then potential negligence.

if pregnant woman in car and both damage, also independently liable to foetus

in some jursifactions parent can claim child cant sue.

Hewitt vs Jordan 1981, Mississippi – committed child. When got out sued parent. Disupts family harmony

ME: what is length of term a child would have to make such a claim? In uk, it’s 3 years after realisation or after 18.

Alternative: Negligence Claim

Is duty owed to foetus?

About 6 cases o prenatal harm - where held: Groto v Grotom 1980, mother tetracycl…, discoloured teeth. - In Michigan, willallow prenatal harm claims - Bonti vs Bonti, 1992, New Hampshire: woman cross streetnegligently, hit by vehicle, foetus born, brought suit against mother. Court said mother was negligent. - Vs. Norton trust bank, 2002, court of appeals, automobile, mother negligent driver, brorn, sued, only upto limits of mothers insurnance – suggests ok if someone else paying, but if from parents’ pocket, then no. - In all cases, 3rd party tort. If allow 3rd party to be liable, then parents also. - Also in places where parental tort almost abolished.

If genetically enhance child inappropriately, could be similarly negigleb as if had harmed

3 other cases

car accident case, cocaine using mother and car accident - when courts focus on duty, say mother doesn’t have duty. If we control mother, then limiting her autonomy - if recog duty to foetus, then limiting her capacities

genetic enhancement a little dim - at preimplantation stage, not changes by parent altering lifestyle. But actually choices of child before hand, which don’t necessarily affect mothers determiniation - thus, potential court liability more likely

ME: in the case where an award was made, what was it for ‘diminished life’, harm?

ME: defensive medicine a consequence of this prospect? Ie. Genetic counsellor advising about risk. Is counsellor liable? Not so much parent’s being sued, but subsequently – they will act under the advice of health care professionals. Can the child sue the genetic engineer for ineffectiveness. Ie. I was supposed to get 2m legs, and they’re only 30cm, or something.

Defensive medicine concen – spinabifida, alters advice if prospect of being sued.

ME: eg of child who’s born with athletic genes but wants musical genes. Isn’t this too specific an articulation. Ie. No right to all enhancements. A better example might be muscle fibre type selection. Selecting a child with greater fasttwitch fibre types and they want to be a marathon runner, because this an ‘either/or’ decision. My having of fast limits my slow.

Genetic Engineering and the Consent of future generations Martin Gunderson

sceptical of deontological conservatism and consequential utopianism

doctrine of informed consent – not subhect to experiment/treatment without informed consent

Kantian notion of autonomy

Consent can change normative relations

Questions and Answers

Anita: consent issue. Issue is permitting parents to choose for their children. What are standards for surrogate consent.

James: concept of substituted judgmeent is time constraint and cultural constraint of knowl: standard of care.does concept of substituted judgement…at the time what parents were allowed to do.

Kirsten:

George: parent consent illusion. Gattaca, selecting genes. Over interiew, doctor is guiding them. Is this medical liability?

Kirsten: if child bring suit, probably also malpractice suit from parents on informed issue. Another issue is diff notions of informed consent.

ME: you mentioned tht child sues parent and gets money from insurance company. Is this a way of gaining additional support for people with disabilities? Ie. Is there an incentive for parent to take out insurance that would allow them to claim…

James: cant have consent without knowledge of informed consent.

Anders: difference between treatments outside … blur of zone.

Everybody is already different.

Standard body not only non-existent, but also atemporal.

The Right Not to be Normal as the Essence of Freedom Anita Silvers

Prosthetic used by cyclist

Whether lack of flesh enhances

Making better athlete

Equality of opp requires participation in social practices

Over last century commitment to equality of opp in USA has embraced diversity.

Some critics worry that enhancing lead to social inequality

Boil gifts.

Advantageous in some contexts, not others.

Don’t make people stronger, otherwise disabled will be even weaker, assumes what constitutes strength and weakness

Natural vs artificial – you cant go that way.

Whether boil differences are unfair

Assumption that we are naturally competitive.

Mistaken to assume this.

A lot of evolutionary biology that suggest this to be false

Just as likely to be naturally cooperative

So, if working in a group, don’t you want your colleagues to have strengths that you might not have?

Transhumanist continue to buy in to competitive theory

Enhance our ability to cooperate

Transhumanism and the O(/o)Ther Shannon Ramdin

Politics of technological empowerment

Are transhumanists colonial subject or object?

Haraway’s manifesto

James Hughes – WTA alls under liberal democratic transhumanism. Doesn’t mean not affiliated with radical.

Cyborgs and cytberspace connection.

Web not a new world, but reflection of non-virtual world.

Ever widening digtal divide.

Identity not invisible.

Transhuman technologies - genome

inequalities exist in society

even when technology starts off

ME: why should we expect the Internet to be equally available?

Suffering bodily tolerances and enhancement discourse Jessica Cadwalladar Doctoral candidate critical cultural studies

suffering more than bodily pain

cast as most unquestionable, most natural

poststructuralist claim … to be natural has a number of effects - places thing outside culture - Haraway’s Primate Visions – natural as human and thus cultural description - Patriarchy as natural state of being fed into studies of gorillas

Suffering is a politicised cultural space

Carl Elliott, Better than well Human growth hormone, used to treat shortness almost exclusively in boys Early years, debates about how to use. Some suggested that any boy in shortest 1% should be treated. Short men were observed to suffer following disadvantages – less good jobs, less long term relationships. But parents of boys who grow up to be short men didn’t care about reason, just wanted child not to suffer.

Suffering as trump card.

Yet, suffering not neutral either.

Occurs in relation to deviation from cultural norm.

Those who suffer because of a range of things, don’t suffer because it is natural for them to do so, but because cant fully achieve cultural norms

Taken on by subject.

Merleu ponty

Normal not natural, but conceptions

Pathological deviation from natural functioning

Deviance when not adhering to Norm Fost

Disability already marked as pathological, even in absence of disease.

Any kind fo corporeal difference is taken as diseae

Questions and Answers

ME: competitive with a small c and big C. is competitiveness necessarily a lack of care for one’s competitiveness. One can be competitive without having competitive anxiety.

Anita: what would it mean to engage the public?

Question: you all mentoned respecting difference. What is common ground on which we respect difference? What is our common humanity?

Jessica: Dewey: there is a human nature, but it is built by us.

Anita: where does the burden of proof lie? Why on those who accept difference who don’t even notice it. Example of student who probably had asbergers didn’t know this difference. Are we hardwired to attach certain kinds of difference? Lone wolves. Blind wolves are often lone wolves, because they attach the pack.

Jessica: I have major questions about individual liberty. I have a more inter-subjective view on how subjects come to be. People want to conform.

Of genes, bemes and conscious things: from transhuman enhancements to transbeman rights Martine Rothblartt Martine4@gmail.com

Problem/opptunity/solution

Bemes, like memes but cultural.

Beme mightier than gene

How do DNA and BNA matter? - dna genes - bna translated via neurochemistry or software

Our Right to Life: Life extension, human rights, and the rational refiniement of repugnance Aubrey de Grey

Structure of talk

Leon kass – credit where due

My flavour of non-cognitivism

Evidence from past precedent

Relevance to the (un)desirability of aging

Non-cog – no one true morality

Will aging become repugnant?

ME: it is already isn’t t?

British Association of Sports Exercise Medicine (2006, March, The Belfry)

June 30, 2009

BASEM, 2006.The Belfry

Alfredson Vacularisation Management

Treatment-Difficult! - where does the pain come from? - mid-portion - insertion - proximal (patellar Tendon)

Questions and Answers

Question: how much pain warrants injection?

A: pain that interferes with your daily life

Question: cynical about 70% success rate.

Cathy Speed Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy (ESWT)

‘if a lot of cures are suggested for a disease, it means that the disease is incurable’ (The Cherry Orchard (1904) Act 1, Chekov)

therapeutic ultrasound

Low Intensity Ultrasound

Standard

Shock Wave - initially lithotripsy

Non Union

Rotator Cuff!

ESWT

Technical issues Dosage Proposed mechanism Clinical evidence and interpretation Advers

Does it work? What would it mean to prove to you that it works? People don’t understand economics particularly well, but they value being part of the conversation about the budget. Better and worse systems

The difficult models I presented actually articulate a set of political relationship - the professions

it is part of your job to do this. Currently, you can take it or leave it, but not for long

stem cells pregnancy magazine

Motto

how evaluate - eg. Science cafes – their existence proves the need, it is irrelevant whether you can prove people understand

you don’t need to ensure we all undersand the science

pyramid - controlling information - promoting healthing

Psychology confounding variables increase with chronicity

PEMT:, miuscle pain and gender difcs Eugene lyskow, nebojsa kalezic - gender deifferences in pain sensations

lunch

tissue engineering - mesenchymal stem cells - in vivo

currently not a clinical tool

using post-natal – adult (haemopoietic) stem cells from bone marrow

(other methods: from fat or tissue (endogenous activation in tissue itself)

are there stem cells in tendon - tendon-derived cels have poorer differentiation potential than MSCs - Strassburg et al (Peter Clegg’s work at Uni of Liverpool) - Explains whyt equine tendone injuiries fail tot repair adequately

Hypothesis - implanting stem cells wold provide cell source capable of synthesising a matrix more like tendon and less like scar tissue

action? – orchestra - musician: stem cells - conductor: orchestrates formation of tendon-like matrix

characs of mscs - in vitro

differentiation of MSCs - stem cells implanted systemicall in foeti populated all mesenchymal tissues (Liechty et al, 2000) o differentiated into target cell popn in each case

stimulus for diffn? – - mechanical load - contact with cells - contact with matrix - growth factors

put undifferentiated into tendon

Differentiation potential of MSCs cultured on tendon matrix: an in vitro model - mscs capable of migrating, proliferating, expressing ecm proteins found in tendon

experimental models - surgical models o rabbit tendon (young et al, 1998) o rat patellar tendon (Hankemeier et al, 2005) o

Roger Highfield ‘ have we oversold the stem cell dream? ‘Daily Telegraph, 2005) - field is high on emotion

‘Cool! Ground breaking stem cell science could reduce… - newspaper article on stem cell and horses

Sports Injury and HBOT Jules Eden London Diving Chamber

All info on website

Set up online medical company called eMed

Based in St Johns Wood

HBOT has been used to treat: joint, muscle, ligment, tendon injuries

When used with physio time of recovery reduced by 70%

Definition: wher a patient breaths 100% osygen intermittently while the pressure in t treatment chamber is increased to a point higher than sea level ie. >1abs

Various names: hyperbaric, recompression, decompression

Monoplace or multiplace

Not used as much as it should be

UHMS – society for hboc - to use hbo, need

effects - air/gas embolism - co poisoning - crush injury, compartment syndrome and other acute traumatic ischemia - enhancement of healing in problem wounds

Princoples

Boyle’s Law – bubble crusshing Dalton’s Law – gt thje ppo2 up Henry’s Law

So,

Exposure to 2-3 times normal atmospheric

People believe just binding more o2 to haemoglobin Actualloy, you are pushing it into plama A quantity great enough to sustain life in the total absence of hemoglobin

At point of injury, when you need most o2 to promote repair

Time is the greatest factor athletes - this is different outside of sport

ME: not sure this holds. Most people will want it asap.

Medical Mantra Medical treatment is the balance of benefits for the symptoms versus the side effects to the rest of the body

Does hboc have any side effects? Yes, but rare - middle ear barotraumas (must pop your ears) - claustrophobia – people have impression they are about to go into a coffin - oxygen toxicity – you get this if you breath pure o2 at 3x, for a couple of hours. Not with this! - Boredom - NO (problem with) DOPING

Scottish Study – with Celtic

Who cant go in - untreated pneumothorax

relative contraindication

www.londondivingchamber.co.uk www.uhms.org www.hboevidence.com

Lance Armstrong used to recover

Questions and Answers

Evidence of enhanced performance?

No trials to suggest this

Mesotherapy

Discovery of mesotherapy Dr pistor – discovered

Polyvalent therapy

Anti-doping control - used lidokane, was prohibited some years ago, not allowed intravenously - when controlled, could not conclude whether intra or local - nothing in urine after 4hrs

Brian English Arsenal chief medical officer

Nuscle Injury

‘the only predictive factor for a hamstrong injury is a previous hamstring injury’ Karim Khan

(Is there a genetic predisposition?)

8 days back to playing field, rather than 16 is a big deal

coach can influ number of soft tissue injuries

some athletes just seem more susceptible – thus, genetic?

‘anything extra that may help, I’m pretty inclined to use it’ - providing nothing banned within it

WADA – if stimulates natural growth factor should be banned substance – but I continue to use it.

Tour de France - actovegin use, become a little addiction - WADA said intravenous actovegan will look into it, banned for now. Now, cant have without medical justification ‘massive loop hole’

Not accelerate repair, but prevent the delay

Perhaps employers in the future will expect return from injury quicker

As medical practitioner, you are allowed to inject substances of your choice.

Actovegin banned intravenously during pre-competition, but not banned outright

Everything geared to recovery

Questions and Answers

Do you treat elite as non-elite?

A: yes.

Question: French diff from English. Would there be a role of these treatments in uk

Brian: we are cautious than some of European doctors. Some think we are needle phobic.

Chair: if have 3 kids and 3 weeks off work, then v serious; perhaps more than the elite athlete who loses £60,000 for three weeks, so sure should be entitled.

Cathy: most common question I hear is there anything in it that could dope positive? It has many things in it

Brian: Maximuscle …. Is pharmaceutically produced, so what is says on it, it has, nothing more.

Cathy: side effect of actovegin

Brian: hypertensive when intravenously.

Autologous Blood Injection for the Treatment of Tendinopathy David Connell Consultant Musculoskeletal Radiologist Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital London

www.devilsfun.nl

angiofibrolastic degeneration

tendon healing

3 phases - brief period of acute inflammation – but not cause of pain

after 6 weeks, remodelling – cell to fibre

physio very important

over a year, fibrous to scar-like tendon over 1 year

treatment

while steroids relieve, no evidence that promote healing

steroids act on the pain fibres - only on a delta fibres

Cryriax, J, J Bone Joint Surg 1936

Surgery most effective, but considerable postop downtime

Dry Needling

Bathe in local anaesthetic - dry-needle x2 - 3 weeks apart - rehab/physio

nothing in lit stating efficacy, but perhaps 65%

autologous blood injections

treatment for refractory tendinopathy - fail to respond to rest/physio/ cellular and humoral mediators - stimulate - pgdf/egf/fgf refractory tennis elbow - 28 patients o blind solitary injections o 22 pain free

objective to report findigs in a group of patients

david.connell@rnoh.nhs.uk - trial for test

blood spinning injection of platelets we did try that , centrifuging blood and taking the surface platelets – which is where best is located but haven’t needed to do this. Just use whole blood.

Prolotherapy = ligament schlerosant injections John Tanner

World anti-doping agency Brian English - wada have said blood spinning is definitely doping

Are WADA?

Richard Budgett: They are not concerned about autologous blood But if treat blood to concentrate, then it would be injected growth factors, so break rules, but no way they could find that out. So if you do this, you need a TUE.

A: we have had standard TUE and had them approved, but not for spinning or intravenous. Also tried serum.

Cryochamber

Tendinopathy: NSAIDs, GTN, RF, others and, why not, surgery! Nicola Maffulli Keele University

Most athletes do not want to become healthy, just to be well [fit]

As doctors, want to promote repair, but patient only wants to return to competition

Launch of James Martin Institute, Oxford University (2006, March)

June 30, 2009

Oxford forumOxford forum 1 Wednesday 2 Tom Kirkwood 2 Rally curing aging: the other sociological obstacle 4 Aubry DNJ de Grey 4 Jay Olshansky 5 How would you assess current aging research, and the prospects for significant breakthroughs in any of its major branches 5 Extending Life Span: Scientific prospects and political obstacles 7 Richard Miller 7 Discussant 9 Paul Hodge 9 Sarah Harper and Kenneth Howse 11 Is more life always a good thing? 11 Stronger? 14 Ellen Heber-Katz 15 Stem cell research and its ethical considerations in china 16 Pei Xuetao, Beijing institute of transfusion medicine, stem cell research center 16 Thursday 19 Cognitive Enhancement 19 Nick 19 Happier 21 Susan Greenfield 21 Professor Lord Richard Layard 23 nick baylis 23 Donald bruce 23 Fairer? 25 Enhancement and Fairness, 25 Julian Savulescu 25 When /if Longer, faster strong, smarter life is happier: reflectins on slower, sustainable and more inclusive life experiences 28 Anil Gupta 28 Gregor Wolbring 29 Enhancement, Justice and rights: immortality 29 John Harris 29 Utility pets 31 Elio caccavale 31 Governable? 31 Baroness Sally Greengross 31 Suzi Leather 32 Creativity and Governance 32 Christopher Newfield 32

Wednesday

845-1030

Tom Kirkwood Oeppen and Vaupel, Science, 2002 – shows continuing increasee in life expectancy

Idea that ageing is genetically programmed is fundamentally wrong - illustrated in 1950-s – david lack – zoology in oxford: wild animals never show any intrinsic sign of ageing, because they die young – do not have a chance to become old

thus, no potential…

peter medawa and george Williams

selection shadow – animals die young because environment is dangerous – don’t need to grow old

disposable soma theory – Kirkwood, nature 1977 - animals invest only what they see to be necessary to remain competitive

how much should animals bother in maintaining and repair

shouldn’t talk about natural selection in these terms

geens make choices

dawkins – imperative on genes

regardless of thesis, realities exist

how much invest in reproducing or repairing

there is no genetic programme for ageing. We age because in evol past…

ageing process model

age related frailty, disability, and disease – accumulation of cellular defects, caused by random molecular damage

build bridges between biomedical and social sciences - because we know influ of environment

we know that healthy lifestyle and food can affect this

malleiability of the ageing process - by decreasing exposure to damage (nutrition, lifestyle, environment) - enhance natural mechanisms for protection and repairt ( nutrition, novel drugs, stem cell)

traditional view of ageing - is biololgically determined with inbuilt limit - progressive, irreversible capacity - ageing distinct phase of life style - disases of ageing distinct from intrinsic underlying processes of healthy ageing

dismiss the first - we are programmed for survival not death - ageing intrinsically malleable - youth and age are continuum - intrinsic ageing and many age related diseases share common underlying

successes and limitations – managing expectations - current success o good ustdg, but more to learn o beginnings of ustdg of underlying mechanisms of ageing and age relationship disease o can modify longevity in some animal models – fruit fly, etc – but in nearly every case is uncertain - Current limitations o V little evidence for effecicaly of drug/nutraceutical effects o Cannot yet perform successful gene therapy for well-defined targets such as cystic fibrosis o Cannot yet perform successful stem cell therapy for well defined targets o Potential future discussions largely speculative and unacceptable in other biomedical spheres

Meeting

Education and public engagement- education and professional training - expand research capacity in ageing science - inc professions and industry

Public engagement- government

Public engagement – Citizens - challenge and change negative atts to ageing

Ageing: scientific Aspects – select committee publication from last year

Rally curing aging: the other sociological obstacle Aubry DNJ de Grey

Strategies for engineered Negligle Senescene (SENS)

Jbs haldane, 1963

Four stages of acceptance i) worthless nonsense…

Arthur c Clarke

New ideas pas through three periods Tom Kirkwood

The rejuvenation dividend: the precepts - stretching frailty is v hard, luckilty - the faster we delay frailty without stretching it, the fewer people wil be frail o rate, not extent, of progress is key - partial repair gives more delay than partial prevention o how achieve? – eg. Someone aged a lot, only so much we can do – concept of reserve: amount of additional damage your body can afford to accumulate before things go wrong. How help: start sooner – be healthy earlier; - when a plausible rate of medical progress is presumed o even better repair is possible!

Promising progress or arrogant nonsense

Embo reports 2005 nov 6,(11) 1006-=1008 - None of us believes tht plans to ‘engineer’ the body to prevent ageing indefinitely or to turn old people young again have the remotest chance to success’

Reasons given for dismissing SENS - is unscientific: ‘ easily recognized as a pretence by those - ‘nnoneof pthe sens] - T

Technology and science differe in how they best evaluate evidence - goal: powered flight. Solutions? o Engineer vs scientist

Scientists way of analyzing evidence is misapplied in context of technological goal

‘if an expet cant explain something in his field to an educated laymen…’

the sens challenge with MIT Technology review – www.technologyreview.com - offered $20,000 to discredit de Grey – open to any molecular - editor of technology review thought high profile panel - panel is: craig venter, rod brooks, Nathan myrvhold, vikram kumar, anita goel - two entries submitted, another threatened

sens is following Gandhi - firs tthey ignore you - then they laugh ay ou - then they oopose you - then they say they were with you all along

de grey, adnj, embro Reports 2005; 6(11): 1000 - offer no apology for using media interest in llife extn to make the biologiyt of ageing an exception to planck’s observation that science advances funeral by funaeral, lives lots of them, are at stake

life extension not just science, a biomedical prob too

causes considerable suffering

spoke

himsworht and goldacre, 1999, bmj, 319: 1138-1339 - the older you are, the healthier you’ve been (Perls)

Jay Olshansky How would you assess current aging research, and the prospects for significant breakthroughs in any of its major branches

(background in sociology, but leading biodemographers) now at Uni of Illinois

was at US President’s council in 2002 on ageing

in answer to that, prefer question

can we justify theattempts to slow ageing and how?

answerL yes:

March ‘The Scientist’ - co author with Daniel perry, Richard a miller, Robert n. butler

if can extend healthy life, it would pay longevity dividends, far in excess of anything we could imagine, for indivs and nations

ME: how nations?

Brendon Mayer – editor support for scientist publication

Rationale for pursuing the ‘longevity dividend’ is already in place - current medical model will not work in long run

current medical model - biological limit to life

pharmaceutical industry

surgical procedures

early detection of disease

already commited ourselves emotionally, financially to extending lifelonglearning

the value of life at every age - we value it at every age

by slowing aging we willl do what no drug, surgical procedure, or behaviour modification can ever do – extend your years of youthful vigor and simiulatenously postpone all t costly, disably, and legal conditions expressed at later ages

‘in pursuit of the longeviry dividend’ – TITLe

operative word is: DELAY

not searching for fountain of youth

not proposing transformation of older people to younger

not stopping or reversing aging process

the words, ‘stopping’ and ‘reversing’ should not be in vocabulary

not dramatic extension of duration of lifelonglearning

‘pursuing health extension’ - improvement in public health - extension of period of youthful health and vigor - reductions in frailyy and disability at all ages

if we succeed in delaying aging, bonuses will likely be extn of life and dramatic….

Target - 7 year delay in boil process of ageing

why 7? - it tooko 100 yrs for the total mortality risk of a 74… - Olshanksy, carnes and grahn, 1998 – confronting t boundaries… - Brody, 1983, prospects for an ageing population, nature - The7 is associated with great impact to reduce everything associatd with ageing by half

Longevity dividend - calling on congres to invest 3 biillion dollars annually o dividends • compression of mortality and morbidity • reduction in age-specific risk of all diseases • reduction health care costs • inc indiv and national wealth • benefits will occur for lifespan and across generations • health and economic benefits will exceed elimination of cancer or hearth disease

if we don’t do this?

For those pushing immortality – this is how you would start doing it

Don’t want people making it too old age extremely frail

Extending Life Span: Scientific prospects and political obstacles Richard Miller

ME: first says should not talk about radical etension,

Traditional approach to medical research – one disease at a time

But conquering one cancer, for eg, would have limited yield

Antiaging interventions. Solid facts - seer caloric restriction increases mean and maximal life span in mice - with ex they get old later

now 10 gene mutations that can accomplish same effect

other mutants with lover igf-1 levels also live longer than controls - dogs too: low igf-1 and long life span

treat later life diseases as a group

ageing can be delayed by two diets and by each of > 9 genes, in laboratory animals that repsont o many of the same drugs and hormones that we do

ME: comments that those making biggest claims about extension get headlines

Longevity projectopn: the reality Based ™ approach - calorific rstriction: 30-40% - small dogs: 40% - methionine..

thesis: the obstacles to finding a ‘cure’ for aging are 85% political and 15% scientific

research on the ageing process - for every $100 us congress spends on medical, 6cents goes to ageing

why haven’t we cured aging yet? (ie learned how to slow) - most ‘public’ gerontologist are crackpots and who wants to hang out with that sort of person?

We don’t want to be associated – gi

Eg. Deepak Chopra DHEA Growth Hormne Mealtonin Miracle

This is clearly a scheme for making money

Why haven’t we cured ageing yet?- -= is viewed (incoorectly) as incurable

voters relatives died of some diseas, os diseassa have lobbies, so congress spends money on diseases

aging research lobby v small

drugs that actually slow aging cannot be tested in time to show a profit within the ceo’s lifetime

drugs purported to slow aging are highly profitable even though they don’t work

a poiticaian who wants to conquer cancer or conquer aids is a hero

a politician who wants to slow aging is a nut case

people don’t unstd that quickest way to help diseas

socioo of science

scientists follow money

young scientist follow high tech and need papers NOW, alas key biogerontology expts are often low tech and take a few years

to be honest, it’s not that easy to cure..

gerontologiphobia n: a syndrome charac by a fea of what antiaging might do to soc

‘how far could we go. Too far is one possible answer…like drunks with drink, enough is…

the ‘lynch’ position - ‘stop research on aging because we don’t want t world to fill up with old people’ - ethical

if presented to people 200 yrs ago – would people say we don’t want insulin, etc

ethically when:

a) me only b) well ok, you too c) but not them. We don’t want the world to fill up with old people, now do we.

Discussant Paul Hodge

Thanks peter healey

Baby boomers Nothing done after this

2005 whitehouse conference dec 14, was asked to testify on policy issues and mentioned baby boomers, but first point was longevity

Questions and Answers

Question from Scot: key issues is delay, but if can do repair, that is better. Why isn’t repair possible?

Jaye: similar concept to Aubrey

Aubrey: difference are to do with feasibility of approaches.

Alex Kalasha from WHO: was at whitehouse conf and disappointing that such advanced nation presented such a poor public debate around science. How optimistic are you with the $3billion?

Jaye: agree with Bob Butler’s conclusion that we need to be ambitious. Buit relative to amount of money on medicaare - $300billion, going ater one disease at a time, is miniscule. This is just the beginning of full court press to go after aging in a much more aggressive way thant we have gone after diseases previously

Tom: must be more connectivity between science and political/social agenda. I don’t think we are saying same thing. I think Aubrey is trying to generate enthusiasm that sidesteps practical problems facing problem. We all want the science to come through, but it doesn’t serve any usefl purpose to extrapolate beyond immediate. No great exptn about extn but might change profile of health.trying to find better way to age, and if that leads to life extension, that’s great.

Jay: aging research should appeal to people. Same goes for why should talk about delay rather than sudden immortaility

Aubrey: cross agency cooperation. In my own work, many exptl scientists not gerontologisty, many working on repair and regeneration technology. Not simply lines on graphs but collaborations. On political side, emphasise that actually it’s perfectly ok to have signif life extn as side benefit to addressing frailty and decline.

Chaotics, Philidelphiaa.: historical fallacy, several speakers say we are in a special age. Food, etc. no reason to believe we are in any special time or place. In time of Copernicus, Einstein, etc, every time is special. Advances occurring no diff. Aubrey pointed out max planck’s progress thesis, but he might have chosen Voltaire: I have only made but one prayer…please render my enemies ridiculous, and

Donald Bruce: some speakers mentioned the ‘sales pitch’. What is real in this debate? Question of Shakespeare 7 ages of sans…. All the idea of whatever it is you will do, must have so many things right all at once. Getting one or two bits right not enough. Seems a matter of belief rather than evidence.

Tom: how do you know you wont mke things worse? The rate of progress on research on aging is quite slow. Need to know aims and objectives and priorities. You might say it’s a terrible thing to die of heart disease, but it is quick and if solve, then will leave vulnerable to other degenerative diseases, such as alzheimers etc. it is an imp q.

XX: imp but not answerable in rational way 20 years ago, but middle part of talk was about that. What is evidence. By delaying, one does create animals which postpone, together, these diseases.tf, hypothetical worries about creating people that might have other probs is imp, but are ways that we can begin this.

Jay: what happens if we don’t intervene.

11-1200

Lecture Theatre 5 Sarah Harper and Kenneth Howse Is more life always a good thing?

Sarah: I am an anthropologist by training, interested in demographic and social. Kenneth has a philosophy background.

Discuss both extending max life span, but also extending normal active healthy life span for everyone in world.

IT is better for everyone to live slightly longer than a few much longer.

Now have 4 or 5 generations alive at same time.

Kenneth

2 scenarios - on one side, Jay, Richard and Tom: best prospect of reducing burden of ill health is to go straight for biology of aging - everyone endorsed that and concerned to get across to you that this was a good thing, otherwise stick with what current medicine can offer, which is not so useful. - They suggested that nobody would argue against this - Next to this, is Aubrey’s ideas:

Must consider continuities and discontinuities of these 2 projects.

Not just a feasibility debate. Must confront gerontophobia

I will lay out the case on behalf of gerontophobia

The question Richard miller flagged up is one that a lot of people have taken very seriously

For eg. Jay mentioned US President’s Council Beyond Therapy, they said ‘let’s suppose we can double life expectancy’ would it be a good thing? General conclusions of that report were mainly sceptical. Commissions report did not come down on one side.

ME: should it have? I don’t think this was its remit. Would we have wanted it to? Public debate. Ethical engagement.

Does Jay’s commitment lead to Aubrey’s vision.

ME: we continually refer to Aubrey’s view in a same way to how we refer to Huxley’s

David Sarfadi, Chaotics: husband of working scientist, when they go into lab, don’t have goal to double lifespan of mouse, for instance. You are altering genes that have effects. Don’t choose which route, it’s what the science renders. If scientist thought was bad idea, would have to kill mouse and tell nobody. Never happens, usually scientist runs to NYT. Society will deal with those choices. Always be confronted with maximal of possibility.

Kenneth: but policy makers decide how much we pay.

David: capital will demonstrate: private funders will begin.

Kenneth: in Europe, worry of inequalities

Bill Baingridge, national science foundation: certainly rtrue that long term goals do shape funding. Rhetoric is that start up companies is on short term goals rather than longer term ones.

XX: do not find 2 approaches mutually exclusive. They will feed each other.

Evelyne Bull, ox student.

Kenneth: if I say yes to Jay, am I committed to Aubrey?

Sarah: public privte us Europe divide.

Raphael Ramirez, oxford: advising on patenting. If life becomes a bnusiness, acceptability of that differes. Nobel prize winner in ox who said whoever igns TRIPS agreement, signed death warrant of tens of thousands of Africans. Human rights vs property rights. Even today can patent mouse in USA. Who owns the findingsa. Is it a good thing? What criteria and ‘for whom’. Who frames this? Not good for some poor somalian.

Kenneth: choice as indiv and collectively.

Rachel Hurst, disability and human rights: assumnption that health is absence of disease and disability. I don’t agree. Whichever side we go down, we need to recog that is humans that we are talking about and are they going to be contained. Whatever way you choose, does it matter, if retaining ethical premise that are dealing with human beings.

Sue (Oxford): assumption that longer means happier.

Anil Gupter: is strongter, etc a better life. Health not absense of sickness, it is well-being. What is a good thing? When communities. Society not appreciated handicaps of those who do not see those of others.

ME: allocation of resources as assertion about what is happiness.

Robin Hanson, Economist: often float into abstractions. Prospect of doubling. We have already doubled our lifespan.

ME: is is thte same kind of doubling. Is doubling the issue?

Question: disting ‘whether’ from ‘what if’. Policy has tendency to react to convergent of diff hells. What are hells and heavens in traking this forward.

Donald Bruce: anthropology: what is our ustdg of the human. Premise is based on functional part of us. Diminished view of human. I was once on a sci fi programme – ‘what would it be like to live forever’ what do you do after 2000 years. Ok, stupid scenario. Fact that prince charles not king at his age, phenomenon exponential in this situation.

Sarah: finality, goals, - must keep that within human condition. Mustn’t negate that side.

ME: a ritual death?

Question: reproductive span should go to 80-90 yrs old.

Wolfgang Luca: don’t think will hit 9billion level of population, because birthrate decline. Glad that reproduction has been added to reproduction. Why gerontophobia is with diffciculty of imagining. If assume 3-4 yrs inc per decade, then in west Europe, third of entire population above 80. Prob for legal pension. V little poss for change. Life expectancy goes beyond state increase in retirement age.

Jerry Rav, JMI: is there a culture where is accepted for people to dcide when to go. People in good health.

Gupter: in border of west Bengal and Bangladesh, is custom that go to forest and death by tiger eating you is most devine death.

Sarah: aboriginal – indivs do decide that burden they place on society means they should die. But these are problematic discussions.

James (JMI): by what criteria do we measure a good life. Having discussion about people as indivs planning to life extend as long as poss. Not sure psychologically a good idea. People make choices that involve a whole range of issues. One of obvious techniques of life extension is constrained calorifgic intake – opposite side of prob with obesity. Raises prob. People make choices in that context – taking too much, which makes you live less. These are issues of preventative medicine and public health. People don’t choose to make choices. Am I reasding this issue of calorific intake right. Biggest medical issue at moment is absolute opposite of that. Food and life choices and risk taking in a social context.

Kenneth: fair amount of disagreement

James: healthcare funding so stilted towards treatement rather than preventionl

??: if we’re right about fertility decline in developing countries, major prob not aging but reproduction.

Srah: various myths about aging. By 2050 2 billion people in developing nations over 50.. not just a developed world problem.

Bill SharpE: continuity/discontinuity thesis. Systemic prob. Community in formation here. Contention over goals. None of them know degree of continuity between 2 goals. They are self admitting that we cant tell. Is it worth it? Clearly yes. I have had pleasure watching parents move into 90s. every year has been worth it for them. Only issue is when problems become insurmountable. Tigers as good as some alternatives. Living and learning has indefinite pleasure and learning. Gandhi: live as if you die tomorrow and learn as if you will live forever.

Kahn, oxford: main issue arising for devle countries. What would be the healthy life expectancy, not expectancy at all.

Michael Morrison, Uni of Nottingham: medical and social ideas of health. Strong strteam of technological determinism.

1300-1500

Stronger? Chair: Zhanfeng Cui

Ellen Heber-Katz

Regrowth of tissue

Tissue remodelling during regeneration

DL Stocum

Transfer cells across scar tissue

If can identify cell might be able tccccccccccccccccc

Kevin Warwick

I, Robot with Will Smith

Last implant was chip into nervous system. 100 electrodes fired into medial nerve in left arm – 10,000 nerve fibres, receive sensory signals.

Not as reported in guardian that fits into top pocket, but it was fired into nervous system. Each pin is 1.5mm long. Nerve fibres are 3.5-4mm in diameter.

What could we do with it.

Link with computer

Human senses 5% of world around them – stats from CERN.

ME: how is this different from extra sensory experience through drug use?

Ultra sonic and infrared

What is difference between tv having it and you having it, ethically?

Future of research

With wife, did direct telegraphic nervous system link – brain to brain

Remaining humans will be sub-set.

Stem cell research and its ethical considerations in china Pei Xuetao, Beijing institute of transfusion medicine, stem cell research center

Selfrenewal (Extensive or unlimited) Clonal Multilineage differentation Plasticity Engraftment and repopulation

Stem cells can undergo self-renewal

Stem cells – foundation of regenerative medicine

Big problem with aging in china

Number of stem cell and regen med research projects funded by NSFC annually from 199-2005

Two projects for stem cell research and another two projects for tissue engi neering supported by t Chinese national key project of basic research

Ethical considerations of human embryonic stem cells big issue now

Basic principles of life ethics - respect, non-mal, beneficience, justice

use of stem cell technology - replaceable tissues/organs - repair defective cell types - gene therapy - chemotherapy - drug discover - tumour therapy

ethical debate – i: derivation of ESCs - harvesting es cells destroys t blastocyst - ‘this is murder’ - how to think about embryo, t dispute tht if embryo is a living life has become focus question on each side of dispute

human life, hnumanbeing or human person

definition of personhood - conscio0usly performing personal acts elmi

worldwide cloning research legislation

illegal in china

ethical debate III - any kinds of

etihical debate in chona - gov: against reprod cloning, support therapeutic - scientist: balance sci freedom with erthical constraint public: hESC should not be banned Confucian: human embryo not a person Buddhistic: reincarnation occurs at birth

Ethical Guidelines and regulations for Human ES cell research in china Promiulagated by the ministroy of sc I and technology

Principled stance of china gov - support biotech - acknowl and observe international basic principle - banning human clopning

image of person standing by wal with shadow projecting. At top of wall is apple. Person is reaching for it.

Human Assistance/Function Augmentation/Capability Enahncement by Robotic Advanced Technologies Nagoya University Toshio FUKUDA

Safety, security health - environment, daily life, war and terrorism, product, health, ITS, communication, plant

Transition of work area - manufacturing industry - sensing, recognition, adaptation, learning, security - service industry o medical robot o care robot o transfer system o security o competition (RoboCup, Sport)

Humanoid Robot Vs

Rehabilitation Robot

Society in 21st century

Comfortable space using Robot Technology and Information Technology - in home or

human support technology 1. physical support, sensory/actuation augmentation 2. skill support; dexterity/experience, language 3. intelligence support, information, communication, knowledge, augmentation, enhancement, decision making

human machine symbiosis 1. cell level 2. human and unit level (arm leg) 3. multi human and indiv level (multirobot) 4. organic device level (stomach, heart) 5. human and indiv level (one to one) 6. network level (multi robot and multihuman through network)

Robots: WE4, SAYA, KISMET, CRF1

CRF3 - quiz, Questions and Answers - email retrieval - reaction of touch sensor

communication with CRF multi-scale bio-operations

engineering, bio, medical

Summary: stronger? - human friendly robnotic technology to be advanced ofr aged society - physical/skill/intelligence supports realizable in near future - domains for applications: experts in medical and others. Daily life support for disabled and aged - usage: depends on human decision back to society

natika XXX: amazement and alarm; only available to only those who can afford it

Donald bruce:

Norton, uni of dankstedt: interested in japan and robotics. What do you think about Kevin warwick. You want to make robots work for us, he wants to be one. Who is better off?

Response:

The Nature of Human Natures?

Chair: James Tansey James Hughes, James J.

Lee Silver

Thursday

845-1030

Smarter?

Cognitive Enhancement Nick

Forms of enhancing intelligence

Stimulants (Lee and Ma, 1995) Nutrients and hormones (Martinez and Kesner 1991) Cholinergic agonists (McGaugh and Petrinoc 1995, Levin 1992, Buccafusco, et al 1995) Piracetam famly Ampakines Consolidation enhancers

Learning enhancement for unlearning phobias and addictions (Pittman 2002; hall 2003)

Animal models

Genetic enhancement of memory

Pre- and perinatal enhancement - giving choline supp to pregnant rats improves performance of pups (Meck, Smith and Williams 1987; Mellott et al 2004)

external software and hardware enhancements

multielectrode recordings from more than 300 electrodes (Nicolelis et al 2003, Carmena et al 2003, Shenoy et al 2003) Kennedy and Makay 1998 Alteheld et al 2004, von Wild et al 2002

Uploading Neuromorphic engineering Classical AI

Psychopharmacology of cognitive enhancement Dr Danielle Turner, Uni of Cambridge

An espresso at three in the morning is just so last year, article form Stephen Phillips (THES, last week)

Most people engage with some form of enhancement almost every day

Effective cognitive enhancement for patients - quality of life - benefits to patient, family, society

drugs as tools to investigate how the normal brain works

to improve cognitio0n in healthy indivs for eg - military

one-touch tower of London planning task

modafinil

Questions and Answers

Daniel Reynolds

Jennifer Swift

Lucy Kimble, SAID: will robots be smart enough to bring up children

James Tansey – ‘dyfunctional’ people often are most high performing Joel: why would an athlete want to use modafinil?

Danielle: when Kelly white took, was not a specifically banned substance. Not sure if would enhance. Perhaps makes less impulsive.

Question

Danielle: first time take Ritalin, performance improves. Only helps in novel situation. When familiar, it drops.

Chris, nanotech, Santa Barbera: cognitive effects of hockey stick (graph curve)

David Wood (Scottish, mobile phone industry)

Alfred nordmann – nordmann@phil.tu-darmstadt.de

Happier

Susan Greenfield

Healthier and longer lives Increased leisure Expectation of happiness

The thin line…between therapy and lifestyle

Drugs work by - increasing chemical messewnger (speed) - slow down removal (cocaine) - empty stores (ecstacy) - block it acting (trancquiliers) - act as imposter (heroin) - making trarget more /less sensitive (addiction)

cure for life experiences - flu - feeling blue - about to pig-out - moody - shy - need energy? - Too much energy - Stupid

Taking a drug might not make you better

Efficacy of smart drug determined by baseline – ie more XX your attention more effective they willl be

So called transhumanist idea probc

Difference between well-being and happiness

Depression - if medicate, not making them ecstatically happy - outside world remote - colourless - emptionally numb - little movement - anhedonia

opposite of this ‘active happiness’

screen induced as well as drug induced – plays some computer game footage.

Are we going to live in this cyberworld which will not giove us the kind of happiness that we really want

Total abandonment

Susan Greenfield – Tomorrow’s People

Alleviation of suffering Active abandonment Fulfilment

Options - Techno-ism: no indiv, no fulfilment - Fundamentalism: fulfilment, no individual - Consumerism: indiv, no fulfilment - ..or we could use to development new technology o eureka moment! Basis for happiness.

Professor Lord Richard Layard LSE, Economics, Centre for Economic Performance – Programme on Well-being Welfare to work; chaired UN Universities Economic ; Happiness: lessons from - published march now translated into 11 languages

Happiness is simpler. A single dimension of various emotions.

David Nutt

Already there? - happy pills o pejorative term by both right and left wing media with antipathy to t drug treatment of depression o refer usually to antidep especially new ones, aprtic SSRIs (Prozac, Seroxat, Lustral) o previously benzodiazepines (Valium, Ativan) o but none of these make people happy

potential routes for inc happi - decrease stress o amines – 5HT (noradrenaline) etc o peptides – especially hpa axis - active ‘happiness’ circuits o opiates, alcohol-like, ecstacy-like, drugs o intracranial stimulation (deep brain stimulation)

nick baylis

not happiness, but improvement – in life. Invest in healthy relationships

Donald bruce

Broken shower story

Nuclear energy industry

Computers

What can go wrong….

Athletics - would have known that he cheated if he had used a pill to beat dave Bedford

would we see drug induced athlete as epitome of human ability or something else.

Are there rules about human race? If we step outside, are we less human?

1530

Stem Cell research

Current Policy in Europe

China, loose standards of ethical review.

Problems.

Human genome project progress through huge global collaboration

Not poss with stem cell because some countries ban it

One of probs is

English researchers want to collab with china or India, but heldback because funding bodies concerned about how the research is carried out in development world - woo sung wong controversty (korea) – were supposed to come to the conference

Jerry Shatens

Flexible regulation with respect to research

Australia initially rejected cloning research and is now revisiting that

Has had a lot of attention in the media

‘funding bodies must take adequate steps to satisfy themselves that those they fund intend to carry out their research ethically and in accordance with relevant national regulations and appropriate international guidance as it emerges’.

Questions and Answers

Question: if woman consented to organ donation, would it be ethical to remove her eggs.

Julian: healthy young eggs better for research than older eggs. Science would like eggs from young healthy women, but many people’s intuition. Risks of donation eggs, small but real. Superobviation drugs associated with rare but lethal conditions

What risks can healthy individuals undergo for research? I say ‘quite significant’, but others say much less.

John harris and savulescu: like a horse race. What matters is which horse crosses the lline first, but cannot and should not back just one horse – must be collaborative.

1630

Fairer? Enhancement and Fairness, Julian Savulescu

George Annas ‘improved, posthumans would inevitably come to view the ‘naturals’ as inferor, as subspecies….

Francis Fukuyama - ‘the first victim of transhumanism might be equality…underlying this idea…

Bill McKibben - these would be mere consumer decisions – but aht also means that they would benefit the rich far more than the poor’

nothing new about enhancement - rich buy better o education o health care o technology

these can alter biology direct biological intervention raises no new ethical issues - just a question of which theory of justice goven socity

4 concepts - 1. Fairness or justice 2. enhancement 3. natural distribution of capabilities and disabilities 4. 1. fairness/justice - util egal: strict equality; rawls maximnl prioritarian

john Mackie ‘rights, utility, and universalisation’ - right to fair go

maximising version of giving peoplpe a ‘fair go’ - give as many people as poss a decent (reasonable) chance of decent (good) life

enhancement- - makes our lives better - increases t chance of us having a good life – instrumental goods (health, wealth)

biological – mor beautiful, stronger psychology – better person social, incliuding socially determined environment – cleaner air, better osiac secuiorty controversial – biological or internal technological enhacenemtns – focus on these

enhamcement, disability, and capability

well-being: how well a life goes (goodness); difficult to distribute well-being capability: state of person that inc probab of achieving a good life disability: state of person…

what is a disability?

Typically, deafness etc

But is context dependent

Atopic tendency - asthma in developed world - potection against worm infestation in devl world

need to fix or predict social or other environment circums

biology/psychology as capability/disability - biological or psychology state can be predicted as ether - biologica contributes to health but how well life goes - we are all disabled

eg self control - in 1960s Walter Mischel conducted impulse control, 4 year old children with marshmellow, request resist, but if not give two. Followed up and the ‘delay gratification’ more likely to succeed – impulse control

other categories capacity to work hard or be lazy – gene therapy in monkeys

Buchanan, Brock, Daniels and Wikler (‘all purpose goods’ - intelligence, memory, self-discipline, foresight….

Autonomy enhancing traits Social Moral character

Genes, not men, may hold the key to femal pleasure’- genes accounted for 31% of the chance of having an orgasm during intercourse and 51% during masturbation

3. distribution of capabilities and disabilities

not distrib equally

eg. Intelligence. – normal distribution

example performance enhancement in sport: EPO - natural hormone produced by kidney which stim red blood celss prod - Eero Maentyranta: 3 medals, had 40-50% more red blood cells

Correcting natural inequality - increase red blood cell level o natural

capability we could efficiently set red blood cell level - safety - performance

sport - test of natural biology? - We want to reward naturally best

In sport, only one winner

No reason why there has to be a person who comes last in life

If unit not red cells, but units of the good life - is it really just that there is a natural distrib in how well life goes

social not biological enhancement - good reasons to prefer social rather than biological o if safer, more likely to be successful, if justice requires it, etc o but vice versa – sometimes cheaper, easier, and fairere to alter biology

responses to bioconservatives - nature alots advantage and disadv with no mind to fairness - enhancement improves peoples lives - how well t lives of those who are disav go depends on

conclusion - fairness requires enhancement - failing to enahcnce may result in signif injustice (supervaccine) - conservatives guilty of social detemrinism

When /if Longer, faster strong, smarter life is happier: reflectins on slower, sustainable and more inclusive life experiences Anil Gupta anilg@sristi.org

disabled or differently abled?

When live longer do we exp more?

What is purpose of more meaningful lifelonglearning - accommodates community happiness - sensitivey towards children

what is human capital? - depth of social networks fo which one is a aprt - how do we enhance this depth - are we afraid of being in company of other normal impulsive, intuitive and inspirational people

ways of knowing - knowing, feeling and doing

who is smarter, stronger and stable? - smartness lies in sharing opps

Towards a Fairer Distribution of Technology… Zhao Yangdong

Inequality and immunisatin

Gregor Wolbring

Enhancement would be doping

Link enhancement products to health

2 chjoices

WHO definition – complete social well-being not just absence of disease - social well-being still part of health

more common now is well-being above and health is a determinant of it

for today, health is seen as just medical health

transhjumanist model of health - no matter how conventionally medically healthy, body is defined as limited and in need of modification

‘everyone is impaired’ - Rachel also said this, but with diff connotation

Amatyra sen

David nutt - pharma not going into happier drugs – cannot sell in medical framework so too many probs

transhumanisation of medicalisation

1830

Enhancement, Justice and rights: immortality John Harris

Art Panel

Teresa.dilon@polarproduce.org

Theatre/psychology

Polar produce, mixed media experiences Ma, music within therapeutic context

What kinds of knowledge do art/design practitioners have?

Why – it’s I the mix, baby’ Interdisciplinarity Slippage Languages and knowledges Lens and frames Fun

Difference between artist and scientist

Approach, language, tools, privileging certain types of knowledge, methods, outcomes, reception, interpretations

Comparisons - cyclic creative processes, question finding, depth and explorationh, knowledge generation, outputs/outcomes, transformations

ME: artists believe they are the only ones who are marginal

Blurring the traditional ‘audience-spectator’ relationships – where the audience becomes part of the performance – and the performer becomes a member of the audience

Tina Gonsalves UCL Cognitive Sci, AHRC, ACE fellowship

She had read some pieces

Mobile phone project with University of Toronto

Rama gheerawo Research fellow and programme leader Designing the future through working with users The Helen hamlyn research centre Royal College of Art]

Inclusive design Disability discrimination act 2004

Video ethnography

Utility pets Elio caccavale

GM pets that do not give you the allergy

Translator for dog

Cloning pets

Genetic saving and clone, inc

Transgenic, ornamental fish, taikong corp

Utility pet memento form - request part of animal to be preserved

www.eliocaccavale.com

social fiction scenario

1100-1230

Governable?

Baroness Sally Greengross

Can we make it fair What is role of state (government bodies) Poss to do it without them?

Wolfgang Lutz Vienna Institute of Demography Austrian Academy of Sciences

Suzi Leather

Spain, compensation of €900 for egg donation – how consistent with altruism?

Last year, euro parliament raised profile on Romanian clinic – led to government intervention

Concern about people trafficking

If we could only enhance one charac or trait, which one would we choose if we wanted to enhance the greatest benefit for humanity as a whole?

Creativity and Governance Christopher Newfield

Uni of California, santa barbera Cultural theorist and anti-dualist Centre for nanotechnolo

Disjunction between economic thought and cultural thought

The Innovator’s Dilemma - clayton m christenen

open science model

minimum proprietary, peer review, open pub: 1. tell the people 2. listen to the people

better model

governance is governmentality, not just regulation (Foucault) - care for all t elements of a system in their relations

flourishing - Coleridge: intventions are ‘proofs of original genius only as far as they are modified by a predominant passion, or…when a human and intellectual life is transffered to them from the poet’s own spirit’

The creative process - mihaly csikszentmihalyi (+CN) o preparation o incubation o insight o evaluation o elaboration

governance (governmentality) must support this for community members

governing collaborations - Simonton, rhotgen, 2003, seibold, henwfield

Maximising innovation is to set up a social system

Better model 1. governance is governmentality, not just regulation 2. better modelled as collaborative creativity than as markets, regulation or top-down management (but includes these) 3. collaborative creativity works much better with equality in relations , in labs (valued ‘bridges’) 4. analogy among nations: innovation cannot be separated from justice 5. governance via global institutions promoting egalitarian communication among the diverse knowledge of all stakeholders

better model - from ‘the lexus or the olive tree’

to innovation via justice

Questions and Answers

Question: egg donation is uncomfortable and not without risk, if no compensation, why would a woman do this?

Suzi: sheer altruism is one, but v few people. All donors extensively counselled. Physical and emotional risks. In uk, we do allow egg sharing – in exchnge for reduce cost. Ie woman using ivf to give away some of eggs to 1 or 2 other women and recompensed in kind with reduced cost for treatment. If open system of donation, poss that fewer people will come through, but might deal with by targeting donor. Earlier, sperm donation was 18-24, now are 35-40 yr olds.

James Hughes:

Suzi: challenge your view that regulation restricts. In uk, not true. Clear benefit. What does restrict is that this is not available on NHS and this is by far most imp issue. Most generous country is Israel. – all about state funding. Perhaps with ageing popultion this will improve elsewhere.

Anders: if free innovation is needed in governmentality, if have more bridges, prob is that transdisciplinarity, but gov structure wil have prob getting solutions, restfucture government? Complementary institutions?

Chris Newfield: practical construction effort

Donald Bruce: is there distinction between enhancement and medical? HFEA has embodied that on sex selection for family balancing. Council of Europe has embodied on convention on human rights and biomedicine – sex selection only for serious gender related genetic disease. What is rationale for the distinction? It is one I support, but is it valid as result of distinction?

Suzi: evidence is that public does think can draw clear distinction between selection for family balancing and disease, for instance. Do I think this will hold? No I don’t. I thjink it will be increasingly difficult to do that. One of the reasons is because any kind of disadvantage that can be conceived of as a disability, parents will say ‘I must have this’. I must be able to have a child that doesn’t suffer from x, y or z.

Shefield institute for biotech:

Dave Wood: which charac should we enhance? If spread too far, get nowhere. becom

Posthuman Designs

June 26, 2009

here's one from a year back at Oxford University [slideshare id=1202730&doc=miah2008posthumandesignsweb-090326100230-phpapp01]

Anti-Social Media

June 26, 2009

Talk today at University of Leicester for Social Media: uses and abuses here's what I said, more or less.

[slideshare id=1646461&doc=miah2009antisocialmedia-090626170618-phpapp02]

#antisocialmedia By Professor Andy Miah, PhD

The rhetoric of social media appeals to notion of collaboration, sharing and democratized participation. Web 2.0, open source, and syndication are all exemplary concepts of new methods of exchanging content and platform development. Moreover, their collaborative architecture extends from developers to end users. Yet, the environment of web development and the symbolic capital that accompanies the use of the Internet remains a highly competitive and monetized form. These circumstances compel us to scrutinize the rhetoric of social media and to reveal the complex financial and experiential sociologies that underpin its trajectory. In short, to fully attend to the emancipating and subversive potential of social media, we must address ways in which processes of exclusion remain intact, despite the opening up of technology. This paper addresses such matters and investigates how the culture of participatory media can be both enabling and disabling of social collaboration.

Paper

In the early days, the Internet was rubbish. There were no pictures We had to write everything in code. We didn’t really talk to anyone.

Thankfully, we had games consoles. First there was pong, then space invaders Followed by all kinds of other stuff like pit fall, frogger, and manic miner (which, in retrospect might be seen as a prescient of the decline of industrializtion – the miner strikes happened a year later - but don’t quote me on that)

There were also incredibly complex adventure games, which required us to open doors and so on, like this one.

(just in case you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, you can Bing any of this #ungoogle)

By the way, one of the things I really like about twitter is its revival of @. Remember how everyone used this in everything to signal anything online?

These games were social Computing was social. We played games together We even played them outside, in the world with others

Then Games became anti-social We were told that they made us violent

So, we created new worlds through the Internet First, email (suddenly everything was @ this and @ that) Then chat rooms We made Utopias through Sims, Second Life, World of Warcraft Gaming and Internet came together

Games were social again, but in a different kind of way. The notion of sociability had changed.

It meant something else now.

At the same time, we were now mobile.

But again, In the early days, mobile was rubbish. First, there were problems of size Then problems of signal After this, we have the damn contracts

(we were even charged loads for very little eg. sms)

But then it got better. Things got small, more functional And then they became more sociable

The companies began to realize they can’t charge us for voice So, some gave us 3 network allowing skype to skype calls While others gave us other ‘freebies’, some of which were bad, others good. Lots of stuff will now be free.

We could then integrate platforms Mobiles could do more stuff Like use twitter Or play twitter games, like vampire.

We could even use very small apps for very big things eg. Twitter for Iran Democracy

so this is what happened but there is a dark side to this period and that’s really what I want to talk about

so let’s look at some examples

First Facebook - Friending and unfriending

Are you Interested 2.7m users (1.5% of current user base)

Second Life Paedophilia playground (2007)

Top-Down use, rather than bottom-up Flickr and 10 downing st

This week.... Habitat tweets Iran

Others are more subtle......

Dopplr – tells me how bad I’ve been

Worst (and best) of all my Wikipedia entry (I’m a big fan of Wikipedia) but my entry really pisses me off

So what went wrong? Well, nothing of course. It has always been at least as bad as it has been good. Anti-social activity has always been part of computing culture Spam, Viruses – even when my computer crashes, I sometimes think it’s just trying to get at me.

And for those who know me – as I expect most of you here – I champion the good way over the bad – though learn a great deal from the bad

But if we want to understand how to promote more good than bad, then we need to understand that concept better – what is social media?

Convergence just doesn’t cut it. Technological enhancement doesn’t do the job either. Something more profound is taking place.

To conclude “social media is a product of various trajectories across computing, gaming, mobile and online development, but most importantly our socialization into these cultures

If we fail to socialize, we will struggle to get social media”

Anti-Social Media (2009, Jun 26, Leicester)

June 25, 2009

Talk tomorrow in Leicester for Social Media: Uses and Abuses will mention the ZX Spectrum, Flickr, Dopplr, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Bing, iPhone, Second Life, The Sims, World of Warcraft, and much, much more.

Have you experienced anti-socia behaviour in social media environments?

http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/bulletin-board/2000-2009/2009/06/nparticle.2009-06-17.3587483528

http://usesandabuses.wordpress.com/

Nanotechnology and Postmodern Culture (2009, Jun 9)

May 25, 2009

Giving talk at Sheffield Uni on 9 June - Nanotechnology and Postmodern CultureWhat kind of future is nanotechnology creating for us? What will it mean to be human in the twenty-first century?Professor Richard Jones (Physics and Astronomy), Dr Alex Houen (English), and Professor Andy Miah (Media, Language and Music, University of the West of Scotland)

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/english/arts-science/events.html#June+2009

The IVth Annual Postgraduate Conference in Bioethics.

May 21, 2009

I'm giving one of the keynotes at this conference next month on BioArt and BioEthics. More details to follow. It's in Belfast, 22-23 June.

Blog

AND?

CONTRACT | Thursday 24 September

INFECT | Friday 25 September

COMPETE | Saturday 26 September

DESIRE | Sunday 27 September

Biographies