Tipstack till Oskar.

I need a place to sleep, clean water to drink, and nutritious food to eat. I need relationships with my fellow man. Anything beyond this is luxury. If humans managed to do without a modern luxury for thousands of years, I can also. There is no logic in driving a car to work, then working for eight hours to pay for the car. There is no logic in owning a home with three bedrooms when only one of them sees use more than three times a year. There is no logic in every household in a neighborhood owning their own costly gasoline powered mower when it only gets use fifteen minutes a week. There is no logic in using central heating to heat the bathroom, TV room, and vacant bedrooms to achieve a five degree increase in the only occupied room.

…

Inspirerat av ERE-boken eller tvärtom? En del bra grejer, och en del som jag inte håller med om.

(Source: news.ycombinator.com)

Filosofisk text av Zach Barnett. Bra!

The following dialogue was published by Cambridge University Press: THINK29, Vol. 10 (Autumn 2011)
© 2011 Royal Institute of Philosophy All Rights Reserved

Background

What if we could save money, radically reduce our environmental impact, and have a freer, less complicated life?

Treehugger founder Graham Hill has part of the answer: we need to have less stuff and live in smaller spaces, like the 420sf (~39 m2) apartment he will renovate in 2011. With some design and technology magic, we think 420 square feet can allow for working at home, space for 2 guests to stay over, a sit-down dinner for 12, lounge space for 8, and maybe even a steam room.

So we’re asking you to redesign a small space thinking about these core ideas:

• transforming space - use one space for work, play, sleep, guests
• digitize everything - photos, books, music
• from ownership to access - think Netflix, Zipcar, Airbnb, etc.
• only the essentials - cut down on extraneous stuff, leaving only what’s really necessary

The winning concept will be used in a renovation of a 420sf apartment in New York City in mid 2011. Ideas will remain online as reference, to inspire and encourage others to rethink how they buy, rent, renovate and furnish their future properties.

Members of ExI contributed to the first Transhumanist FAQ which originated on the transhuman mailing list in the mid-1990s. ExI has added much of that information to its FAQ to provide a reliable information source.

Transhumanism-FAQ hos Extropy Institute.

The Principles of Extropy in Brief

1. Perpetual Progress: Extropy means seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an open-ended lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to continuing development. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities as individuals, as organizations, and as a species. Growing in healthy directions without bound.

2. Self-Transformation: Extropy means affirming continual ethical, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, through critical and creative thinking, perpetual learning, personal responsibility, proactivity, and experimentation. Using technology — in the widest sense to seek physiological and neurological augmentation along with emotional and psychological refinement.

3. Practical Optimism: Extropy means fueling action with positive expectations – individuals and organizations being tirelessly proactive. Adopting a rational, action-based optimism or “proaction”, in place of both blind faith and stagnant pessimism.

4. Intelligent Technology: Extropy means designing and managing technologies not as ends in themselves but as effective means for improving life. Applying science and technology creatively and courageously to transcend “natural” but harmful, confining qualities derived from our biological heritage, culture, and environment.

5. Open Society: Extropy means supporting social orders that foster freedom of communication, freedom of action, experimentation, innovation, questioning, and learning. Opposing authoritarian social control and unnecessary hierarchy and favoring the rule of law and decentralization of power and responsibility. Preferring bargaining over battling, exchange over extortion, and communication over compulsion. Openness to improvement rather than a static utopia. Extropia (“ever-receding stretch goals for society”) over utopia (“no place”).

6. Self-Direction: Extropy means valuing independent thinking, individual freedom, personal responsibility, self-direction, self-respect, and a parallel respect for others.

7. Rational Thinking: Extropy means favoring reason over blind faith and questioning over dogma. It means understanding, experimenting, learning, challenging, and innovating rather than clinging to beliefs.

postspectacular:

Essential reading if you’re into cybernetics (via @pachube)

Teknotile är ett projekt som ämnar utforska teorier om vår fysiska, inkännings och teknologiska framtid (en utförligare beskrivning får du på projektets hemsida). Ambitiöst, filosofiskt och en hel del ögongodis. Det jag gillar bäst är deras “3D”-skissblock. Block med 3d-mönster som bakgrund: