The Future of Humanity
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A Dystopian Booklist* Norwell High School Library Media Center
The Worst is Yet to Come: a Dystopian Booklist* Norwell High School Library Media Center Dystopia: 1. a society characterized by human misery, squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding; 2. an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be Anthony, Joelle. Restoring Harmony - Ten years after the Great Collapse of 2031, Molly McClure leaves the safety of her family's island home to travel through a dangerous and desolate wasteland to find her grandparents and persuade them to return with her to Canada. Atwood, Margaret. Handmaid’s Tale - It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a Handmaid in the home of the Commander and his wife. She is allowed out once a day to the food market, she is not permitted to read, and she is hoping the Commander makes her pregnant, because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she was an independent woman, had a job of her own, a husband and child. But all of that is gone now...everything has changed. (summary description from OCLN Library Catalog) Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker - In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship or rescue the girl. The Drowned Cities - In a future America that has devolved into unending civil wars, Mahlia and Mouse barely escape the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities, but their safety is soon threatened and Mahlia will have to risk everything if she is to save Mouse. -
Reducing Nuclear Risks in Europe a FRAMEWORK for ACTION
Reducing A FrAmework For Action Nuclear Risks e dited by Steve AndreASen in Europe And iSAbelle williAmS Featured essay: “the race between Cooperation and catastrophe” by sam NuNN Reducing Nuclear Risks in Europe a FrameWork For acTIoN Edit eD by STeve aNDreaSeN aND ISabelle WIllIamS Featured essay: “The race between Cooperation and catastrophe” by sam NuNN Nuclear ThreaT INITIaTIve Washington, D.c. t he Nuclear threat INItIatIve NTI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with a mission to strengthen global security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and to work to build the trust, transparency, and security that are preconditions to the ultimate fulfillment of the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s goals and ambitions. www.nti.org The views expressed in this publication are the authors’ own and do not reflect those of NTI, its Board of Directors, or other institutions with which the authors are associated. © 2011 the Nuclear Threat Initiative All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys- tem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher and copyright holder. c over phoTo oF a u.S. aIr Force F-16 FIghTINg FalcoN aIrcraFT courTeSy oF The u.S. aIr Force. phoTo by maSTer SgT. WIllIam greer/releaSeD. ii T able oF coNTeNTS Acknowledgments v Authors and Reviewers vii summary coNteNt executive summary: Reassembling a More Credible NATO Nuclear Policy and Posture 1 Joan Rohlfing, Isabelle Williams, and Steve Andreasen featured essay: The Race Between Cooperation and Catastrophe 8 Sam Nunn chaPters 1. -
Hayles Program in Literature, Duke University, North Carolina
Response Essay After shocks: Posthuman ambivalence N. Katherine Hayles Program in Literature, Duke University, North Carolina. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2010) 1, 262–271. doi:10.1057/pmed.2010.28 When I began writing How We Became Posthuman (1999), I was drawn to the topic in part because of the intense ambivalence I felt toward the idea of the posthuman. I thought, no doubt naively, that writing would help me resolve it. Far from overcoming mixed feelings, the writing intensified my emotions by bringing the issues into sharper focus. As David Gary Shaw rightly observes, the book is drenched in feelings – feelings of dread, possibility and hope. More than a decade later, my ambivalence remains unresolved. I do not doubt that coming decades will see us plunging deeper into what I have elsewhere called the regime of computation, creating more intelligent machines and more pervasive data systems that, having already transformed the meaning of ‘human,’ will continue to do so with increasing urgency and momentum. What are we to make of this trajectory, and what are the possibilities for constructive interventions? While I have not escaped dread in contemplating these questions, I want to focus in this inaugural issue of postmedieval on what posthumanism can offer to premodern studies, and what premodern studies can offer to posthumanism. In my view, we cannot prevent the regime of computation from continuing to expand, but we have an opportunity to interpret it in ways that may help to maximize its positive potential and minimize its risks. With this objective in mind, I want to focus on three areas that seem to me particularly promising, richly explored in the essays in this collection: futurity, non-human others and distributed cognition. -
16401729.Pdf
............. C/86-1 Neither MAD nor Starstruck -- and Doubts, Too, About Arms Control by George W. Rathjens and Laura Reed Defense and Arms Control Studies Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 March 1986 2/26/86 Neither MAD nor Starstruck -- and Doubts, Too, About Arms Control* George W. Rathjens Laura Reed Throughout the whole of the post-World War II period there have been strong differences over aspects of American nuclear policy; notably, about the sizing of nuclear forces, about particular weapons systems (e.g. the B-1 bomber and the MX missile), and most significantly about the role of nuclear weapons in dealing with threats other than that of a direct attack on the United States (i.e., about "extended deterrence" and "nuclear war fighting"). But there were also broad elements of consensus, at least from the Kennedy through the Carter Administrations, on several fundamental points: 1.) There could be no effective defense of the American population and social infrastructure against Soviet nuclear weapons. Cities and most other works of humanity were seen to be so fragile and nuclear weapons so powerful that the offense would likely always have the advantage over the defense. Any effort to defend the whole country could be negated by improvements, at less cost, in Soviet offensive capabilities, and likely would be, leaving the U.S. vulnerable to total destruction. 2.) This meant that the only real hope of dealing with a possible direct Soviet attack against the United States lay in deterrence through the threat of inflicting punitive damage on the Soviet Union. -
Nuclear Weapons: Frequently Asked Questions
Nuclear Weapons: Frequently Asked Questions 1. Hasn’t the UK already got rid of most of its nuclear weapons? What’s all the fuss? Since the end of the Cold War, the UK has unilaterally disarmed as many as 300 of its nuclear warheads. That leaves a current stockpile of 215 nuclear warheads, of which 120 are ‘operationally deployed’ on (3) Trident submarines, 40 are on the fourth submarine which is on stand-by and the rest are ‘spares’. The current government have said they will cut the total number to 180 by the mid-2020s.1 Each of the 215 warheads currently held by the UK has a maximum destructive capacity equivalent to 100,000 tonnes of TNT. By comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which killed many tens of thousands of people in a single instant and tens of thousands more through radiation sickness and fatal injuries,2 had a destructive capacity equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of TNT.3 Each UK warhead is therefore more than 6 times as destructive as the Hiroshima bomb. One Trident submarine carries 8 missiles with 5 nuclear warheads each, for a total of 40 warheads, or roughly 250 times the explosive power as was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The UK has four Trident submarines and one is always at sea, ready to launch its missiles at a moment’s notice. Recent studies by the scientific community4 have suggested that major climatic effects for the whole northern hemisphere could result 1 Official UK submission to the NPT PrepCom Conference at the UN in New York, April 2014. -
European Technology Agency ANTEPRIMA.Pdf
revision copy revision copy Associazione Culturale Diàlexis is a Think Tank founded in 2006 at the occasion of the celebration of the 50 years of the Rome Treaty. It published, at that occasion, with the publishing house Alpina, the Book ―50 Years of Europe, Images and Reflections‖, and organised in the Palace of the Piedmont Region the exhibition ―Immagini e riflessioni per i 50 anni d‘Europa‖. It has the aim of diffusing in Piedmont the knowledge of Europe and in Europe the knowledge of the Piedmont. Baustellen Europas is a bookseries devoted to Europa as cultural construction, previously published by Alpina, and now by Associazione Culturale Diàlexis Riccardo Lala, chairman of the Associazione, has participated to the making of Europe in the most diverse capacities: youth movements, trade associations, national and European civil and military public service, trade unionism, management of financial and industrial European multinationals in the areas of fashion, chemistry, energy, high tech, transportation, defense, services and publishing. He negotiated and drafted the founding documents of ELV, the company manufacturing the Vega Launcher of Arianespace, the 1st stage of Ariane as well the AVUM body of the European reusable space vehicle. revision copy revision copy Copyright 2020 By Riccardo Lala All rights of paper and digital reproduction or adaptation, partial or total, by whichever means (including microfilms and photocopies) are reserved for all countries. The publisher may grant, under payment, the authorization to reproduce a -
Unprecedented Technological Risks
Policy Brief: Unprecedented Technological Risks Future of Humanit y Institute UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD Unprecedented Technological Risks Over the next few decades, the continued development of dual-use technologies will provide major benefits to society. They will also pose significant and unprecedented global risks, including risks of new weapons of mass destruction, arms races, or the accidental deaths of billions of people. Synthetic biology, if more widely accessible, would give terrorist groups the ability to synthesise pathogens more dangerous than smallpox; geoengineering technologies would give single countries the power to dramatically alter the earth’s climate; distributed manufacturing could lead to nuclear proliferation on a much wider scale; and rapid advances in artificial intelligence could give a single country a decisive strategic advantage. These scenarios might seem extreme or outlandish. But they are widely recognised as significant risks by experts in the relevant fields. To safely navigate these risks, and harness the potentially great benefits of these new technologies, we must proactively provide research, assessment, monitoring, and guidance, on a global level. This report gives an overview of these risks and their importance, focusing on risks of extreme catastrophe, which we believe to be particularly neglected. The report explains why market and political circumstances have led to a deficit of regulation on these issues, and offers some policy proposals as starting points for how these risks could be addressed. September 2014 1 Policy Brief: Unprecedented Technological Risks Executive Summary The development of nuclear weapons was, at the than nuclear weapons, because they are more time, an unprecedented technological risk. The difficult to control. -
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Decodjng Nuclear Winter; Has War Lost Its Name? Pertti Joennierni Tampere Peace Research Institute Finland Working Paper No. 11 First Annual Conference on Discourse, Peace, Security and International Society Ballyvaughn, Ireland August 9-16, 1987 Universtty of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0068 1988 The conference held at Ballyvaughn, Ireland, in August 1987 was the beginning of an on-going international intellectual interchange on topics related to the discourse of peace and security and international society. It will include annual meetings, the second to be held in summer 1988, again in Ballyvaughn. Sponsored by the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the conferences are intended to foster general inquiry into these scholarly topics and to stimulate research and teaching that incorporates these perspectives at University of Californiacampuses. This year's seriesof workingpapers comprises the writings which seventeen authors submitted to their colleague-participants in preparation for the 1987 conference. Some have been updatedsomewhat before publication here. Some have been published elsewhere and are reissued here by permission. The Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation hopes that these working papers will help to interest even more scholars in pursuing these lines of thought. James M. Skelly Series Editor These papersare available at the IGCC printing andmailing costof $2.50 each. For air mail delivery to an address outside North America, add $2. California orders add 6.5%. The Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation is an interdisciplinaryMulticampus Research Unit of the Universityof California, established by the Regentsin June 1983. -
The First Real World War and the Emerging Nuclear Holocaust
HAOL, Núm. 13 (Primavera, 2007), 19-41 ISSN 1696-2060 THE FIRST REAL WORLD WAR AND THE EMERGING NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST Petri Minkkinen University of Helsinki, Finland. E-mail: [email protected] Recibido: 14 Diciembre 2006 / Revisado: 24 Enero 2007 / Aceptado: 31 Enero 2007 / Publicación Online: 15 Junio 2007 Abstract: In this article the problematic of the (FRWW) de facto declared by the first Bush First Real World War (FRWW) is discussed in administration after the S-11-2001 atrocities. It the light of Emerging Nuclear Holocaust. This is possible to suggest that the combination of discussion begins with an overview of Warren development of nuclear power for military W. Wagars science-faction novel A Short utilization represented by the Bush-Blair History of Future and related some fifty years coalition and the development of civilian- transition period conceived within world- commercial nuclear power represented by the systems analysis and as that of a major civilian-commercial nuclear power promotion bifurcation by Immanuel Wallerstein. It may by Lipponen open up possibilities for direct or thus be possible to pass into the future sooner indirect annihilation of the human kind in the than anticipated and reconstruct the passage of context of a Nuclear Holocaust in the history, actuality and future in actuality and foreseeable future. nearer than anticipated future, possibly without a Nuclear Holocaust and it may be possible to end On the other hand, as has been the case in the the FRWW without further negative regressions course of human history, though it is possible to into the past and without a Second Real World identify certain cyclical and repetitive War. -
Environmental Studies for Undergraduate Courses
Environmental Studies For Undergraduate Courses Erach Bharucha CORE MODULE SYLLABUS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES FOR UNDER GRADUATE COURSES OF ALL BRANCHES OF HIGHER EDUCATION Vision The importance of environmental science and environmental studies cannot be disputed. The need for sustainable development is a key to the future of mankind. Continuing problems of pollution, loss of forget, solid waste disposal, degradation of environment, issues like economic productivity and national security, Global warming, the depletion of ozone layer and loss of biodiversity have made everyone aware of environmental issues. The United Nations Coference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janerio in 1992 and world Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg in 2002 have drawn the attention of people around the globe to the deteriorating condition of our environment. It is clear that no citizen of the earth can afford to be ignorant of environment issues. Environmental management has captured the attention of health care managers. Managing environmental hazards has become very important. Human beings have been interested in ecology since the beginning of civilization. Even our ancient scriptures have emphasized about practices and values of environmental conservation. It is now even more critical than ever before for mankind as a whole to have a clear understanding of environmental concerns and to follow sustainable development practices. India is rich in biodiversity which provides various resources for people. It is also basis for biotechnology. Only about 1.7 million living organisms have been diescribed and named globally. Still manay more remain to be identified and described. Attempts are made to I conserve them in ex-situ and in-situ situations. -
Global Catastrophic Risks
Global Catastrophic Risks Edited by Nick Bostrom Milan M. Cirkovic OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Contents Acknowledgements ν Foreword vii Martin J. Rees 1 Introduction 1 Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkoviô 1.1 Why? 1 1.2 Taxonomy and organization 2 1.3 Part I: Background 7 1.4 Part II: Risks from nature 13 1.5 Part III: Risks from unintended consequences 15 1.6 Part IV: Risks from hostile acts 20 1.7 Conclusions and future directions 27 Part I Background 31 2 Long-term astrophysics! processes 33 Fred C. Adams 2.1 Introduction: physical eschatology 33 2.2 Fate of the Earth 34 2.3 Isolation of the local group 36 2.4 Collision with Andromeda 36 2.5 The end of stellar evolution 38 2.6 The era of degenerate remnants 39 2.7 The era of black holes 41 2.8 The Dark Era and beyond 41 2.9 life and information processing 43 2.10 Conclusion 44 Suggestions for further reading 45 References 45 3 Evolution theory and the future of humanity 48 Christopher Wills· 3.1 Introduction 48 3.2 The causes of evolutionary change 49 xiv Contents 3.3 Environmental changes and evolutionary changes 50 3.3.1 Extreme evolutionary changes 51 3.3.2 Ongoing evolutionary changes 53 3.3.3 Changes in the cultural environment 56 3.4 Ongoing human evolution 61 3.4.1 Behavioural evolution 61 3.4.2 The future of genetic engineering 63 3.4.3 The evolution of other species, including those on which we depend 64 3.5 Future evolutionary directions 65 3.5.1 Drastic and rapid climate change without changes in human behaviour 66 3.5.2 Drastic but slower environmental change accompanied by changes in human behaviour 66 3.5.3 Colonization of new environments by our species 67 Suggestions for further reading 68 References 69 4 Millennial tendencies in responses to apocalyptic threats 73 James J. -
Eschatology and the Technological Future
Eschatology and the Technological Future This book offers an insightful and timely analysis of key theorists and ideas in the intersection between theology and technology. From the religiously inspired technological optimism of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Nikolai Fedorov, to the darker technological pessimism of Jacques Ellul, the contributions of Christian theorists to under- standing the technological milieu can offer us fresh perspectives on some intractable problems of modern life. As Burdett clearly shows, technological optimism and utopianism have religious roots, and a technological culture that ignores its own roots is in danger not only of environmental devastation, but also existential and spiritual despair. A fi ne book at a critical time. — David Lewin, Liverpool Hope University, UK The rapid advancement of technology has led to an explosion of speculative theories about what the future of humankind may look like. These “tech- nological futurisms” from the fi elds of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology are drawing growing scrutiny from the philosophi- cal and theological communities. This text seeks to contextualize the grow- ing literature on the cultural, philosophical and religious implications of technological advancement by considering technological futurisms such as transhumanism in the context of the long historical tradition of technologi- cal dreaming. Michael Burdett traces the latent religious sources of our con- temporary technological imagination by looking at visionary approaches to technology and the future in seminal technological utopias and sci- ence fi ction and draws on past theological responses to the technological future with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Ellul. Burdett’s argu- ment arrives at a contemporary Christian response to transhumanism based around the themes of possibility and promise by turning to the works of Richard Kearney, Eberhard Jüngel and Jürgen Moltmann.