Julian Baggini Quotes

Our grandkids will lead the lives of the gods of mythology. Zeus could think and move objects around. We'll have that power. Venus had a perfect, timeless body. We'll have that, too. Pegasus was a flying horse. We'll be able to modify life in the future.

If I had my druthers, I would be a brain in a jar, with a burlap skirt around the cart I'm on - I don't attend to my physical being much.

Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.

Not too many people in cocktail parties are aware of Bioprinting and growing organs, or the coming technological singularity; I've seen very little philosophical speculation about how far we can go, how much we could achieve.

You see, I'm also a futurist. I dream about the world 50, 100, maybe even 1,000 years in the future. But I also realize I'm probably not going to see it. However, I wouldn't mind having at least a copy of myself see the future, maybe 50, 100, 1,000 years into the future. It would be a fantastic ride.

A person whose skin is metallic can no more have its reproduction restricted than a black-skinned person. Regarding life as a form of machinery and intelligent machines as people without our environmental limitations is essential in understanding FAP, the Final Anthropic Principle, which deals with evolution in the far future.

Our species is on the verge of changes that will fundamentally alter what it means to be human... and we are the people driving that change.

By the time we get to the 2040s, we'll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that's singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter.

Ultimately, it's not going to be about man versus machine. It is going to be about man with machines.

Some people call this artificial intelligence, but the reality is this technology will enhance us. So instead of artificial intelligence, I think we'll augment our intelligence.

I grew up using maps and having a sense of direction, and now I have a phone. I used to try to remember numbers, and now I... can just call them up instantly. And that's great. But what's happening right now is that we're in a phase of human evolution where we're merging with machines.

You take fantasies, which for thousands of years belonged to the religious realm - overcoming death or our merging with the universe - and you suddenly start talking about them in a more technical perspective as something that can be achieved, not after you die with the help of supernatural beings, but in this very life with the help of technology.

The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.

I think a few hundred years from now we'll start having the 'posthuman' era of different species.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.

By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.

I think there can be a positive sort of futurism even in a presentist society. But I think it's a kind of futurism that envisions augmenting human ability and intellect rather than creating some artificial machine intelligence that displaces us.

Extending our lives, extending our creativity, opening up the mysteries of the brain. All those things that are really exciting - that's kind of the basis of 'Neon Future,' and that's why I interviewed Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey.

We are beginning to see intimations of this in the implantation of computer devices into the human body.

Andy Clark refers to humans as 'natural-born cyborgs.' What he means is that we habitually extend and change our body-concept without even thinking twice about it.

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.

Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.

The Cube is an imitation of life itself - or even an improvement on life.

We'll be 'outsourcing' our creativity and our thought processes to manufactured components that could be inconspicuously implanted beneath our coiffeurs. Welcome to the Borg. You might not be entirely comfortable with such cybernetic enhancements, but all the smart money says it's going to happen.