Stefan Sorgner on “We Have Always Been Cyborgs”
// source: https://www.meetup.com/London-Futurists/events/277011790/
Philosopher Stefan Lorenz Sorgner will be speaking to London Futurists this Saturday, 10th April, to share key ideas from his forthcoming new book “We Have Always Been Cyborgs”, as well as from his previous book (published in December 2020) “On Transhumanism (The Most Dangerous Idea in the World?!)”. Everyone is welcome to attend.
As the publisher says:
>> The concept of transhumanism emerged in the middle of the twentieth century, and is having a growing influence on discussions around AI, brain-computer-interfaces, genetic technologies and life extension. As a subject, it remains controversial and widely misunderstood.
In “We Have Always Been Cyborgs”, Sorgner explores the critical issues that link transhumanism with digitalisation, gene technologies and ethics. He examines the history and meaning of transhumanism, and asks bold questions about human perfection, cyborgs, genetically enhanced entities, and uploaded minds. <<
Sections in the book include “Transhumanism in a nutshell”, “Silicon-based transhumanism”, “Carbonate-based transhumanism”, “Moral (bio)enhancement”, and “A fictive ethics”.
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This event will be hosted on Zoom. To register, visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xh6bdTJ6SauHqeS2LG2vGw
The Zoom registration fee (UKP £2.50) helps cover London Futurists running costs, such as software licensing.
(The Zoom registration page opens a PayPal interface, but there is NO requirement for attendees to use a PayPal account.)
The webinar can also be viewed, without charge, on the London Futurists YouTube channel, but without the option to participate in the live Q&A.
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The webinar will start broadcasting at 4pm UK time on Sat 10th April. To find this time in other timezones, see https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20210410T150000&p1=136
You are advised to log into Zoom up to 10 minutes ahead of the publicised start time of the event, so you won’t miss the start of the live broadcast.
As the discussion proceeds, attendees will be welcome to raise questions and vote to prioritise questions raised by others.
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Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is a philosophy professor and Chair of the Department of History and Humanities at John Cabot University in Rome. He is also director and co-founder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, and Visiting Fellow at the Ethics Centre of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena.
Sorgner is editor of more than 10 essay collections, and author of six monographs. In addition, he is Editor-in-Chief and Founding Editor of the “Journal of Posthuman Studies” (a double-blind peer review journal, published by Penn State University Press since 2017).
Sorgner is also a Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), https://ieet.org/fellows/
These activities, among others, have earned Sorgner the description “bad boy of philosophy”, https://www.swr.de/swr2/wissen/der-traum-vom-neuen-menschen-wie-biohacker-ihr-erbgut-manipulieren-swr2-wissen-2020-05-26-100.html
For more information about Sorgner see http://www.mousike.de
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To register for this event, visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xh6bdTJ6SauHqeS2LG2vGw
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PS Sorgner is careful to describe himself as a supporter of what he calls “a weak form of transhumanism”. More precisely, what he supports is a “weak Nietzschean transhumanism”. For myself, I (David Wood) am happy to be described as a supporter of “a strong form of transhumanism”.
The differences — and the implications — are part of what our discussion will cover on Saturday.
