My essay “The Sacred Road to the Stars,” which is also a section of my forthcoming book, has been published on The Transfigurist, the online magazine of the Mormon Transhumanist Association (MTA). I argue that we should consider our first timid steps into outer space as the beginning of our journey on the sacred road to the stars.
Tag Archives: Space
unSingularity – let’s enjoy the slow hike to the future
As a child of the 60s I spent most of my life regretting that we didn’t build those cities on the Moon and the planets. Now I realize that the Apollo adventure was too far from our supply lines to be sustainable. But we are still doing space, and someday (not soon) we will go back to the Moon, and then to Mars, to the planets, and to the stars.
Continue reading unSingularity – let’s enjoy the slow hike to the future
League of Cosmic Engineers – a short story by Stephen Kagan
Editor’s note: this delightful short story is a new year present from Stephen Kagan, the author of the mystically beautiful VR/AI novel “Augmented Dreams, the Singularity Palimpsest “. Stephen says: “This story has taken extensive thinking, imagination and meditation to craft. It was inspired by some of your work, beginning with Religion for the Cosmic Frontier, combined with some of Ben’s Manifesto, and some of my conversations with you. My goal was to create the grandest vision I can build for our cosmic future, in some ways beyond even what Stapledon created in StarMaker… Becoming godlike and becoming God…”
Continue reading League of Cosmic Engineers – a short story by Stephen Kagan
League of Cosmic Engineers
Editor’s note: this delightful short story is a new year present from Stephen Kagan, the author of the mystically beautiful VR/AI novel “Augmented Dreams, the Singularity Palimpsest “. Stephen says: “This story has taken extensive thinking, imagination and meditation to craft. It was inspired by some of your work, beginning with Religion for the Cosmic Frontier, combined with some of Ben’s Manifesto, and some of my conversations with you. My goal was to create the grandest vision I can build for our cosmic future, in some ways beyond even what Stapledon created in StarMaker… Becoming godlike and becoming God…”
The Night Sea Journey
Editor’s note: This is the first short story of Stephen Kagan to published here, hopefully the first of many. Stephen is an author and IT professional with a long standing interest in the psychology of consciousness, ecopsychology and the melting point of psyche, technology and nature. He also the author of the novel Augmented Dreams, the Singularity Palimpsest.
The Trap
Several hundred million years ago a large object drifted in to the solar system. Deep inside the object was a dormant intelligence. The object swirled by the sun hundreds of times on a fast hyperbolic trajectory before it had sufficiently slowed down. The slowing down process took thousands and thousands of years but the intelligence inside the metallic asteroid didn’t care about a few thousand years. It was one of millions that traveled endlessly through the galaxy on a mission.
Exodus
When Hawks did his first laboratory experiment in december 2017 he was looking for a means to push dirt from flat screen solar panels using minimum electrical current. Hawks was a poor researcher working in some dismal US east coast laboratory and he had a pretty dismal methamphetamine habit. So he didn’t realize the implications of his repulsor plate technology. In his private references he briefly mentioned the consequences of the uncannily range of the push. He saw no practical application for the technology and assumed marketing this would be nothing but misery, with all the patent trolls of that era, so he put it up for auction to the highest bidder. Within 12 hours hobbyists world wide had appropriated the blueprints for the repulsor plates and were printing and improving upon the original design. It took 3 weeks for someone to come up with a completely new application.
Catchup Mission
It is the year 2079 I am floating in the void. This is a mission of great historical relevance. I am 350 Astronomical Units removed from earth. My signals take over two days to reach the inner solar system. I am flying solo in a private fusion-propelled yacht by the name of Stross IV. For dozens of astronomic units in all directions there is no object greater than a small hill.
Sir Martin Rees on super-advanced post-biological civilizations
In an article on The Telegraph, Royal Astronomer Sir Martin Rees writes on post-biological evolution, immortality, the Singularity, vast oceans of yet unknown science, and synthetic realities created by super-advanced civilizations.
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Uploaded minds to the stars
In my article “Uploaded e-crews for interstellar missions” on KurzweilAI, republished by io9 as “Why we should send uploaded astronauts on interstellar missions,” I make a modest proposal for cost-effective interstellar missions: to do without the wetware bodies of the crew, and send only their minds to the stars, their software, uploaded to advanced “computronium” circuitry, just like in Charlie Stross’ fictional Field Circus miniature starship.