Regrettably, significant segments of the transhumanist movement are indeed ill-prepared to pay serious attention to the social effects of new technologies.

As these things start to happen, though, they’ll spark a frantic search for people that have thought about these sorts of thing before they happened. Breakthroughs in nano, bio, information or cogsci have the potential the throw the system for a loop (see for example Infomorph’s discussion of robots and revolution) and being in a place where we can talk about these things will help to further the agenda and lay the groundwork for the type of future society we’d like to see.

Very few transhumanists give much thought to the social effects of new technologies. Even those that do seem to take the stance (a la Kurzweil) that progress is going to — by it’s very nature — be good for (trans)humanity and don’t seem to pay enough attention to potential negative outcomes of new tech.

Singularitarian strands of transhumanist discourse suggest there’s no point in anticipating the social implications of technology. Either the pace of acceleration will throw social formations (except perhaps interpersonal networks) into constant flux, or, come the technorapture, there will be no recognizable human society. (In an Accelerando scenario, is there any conceivable use for sociology?) Millenarianism is an orientation incompatible with far-sighted futurism.

Other strands of discourse, moreover, are prone to individual reductionism, elevating personal happiness and autonomy as the main (if not sole) legitimate social concerns. What’s striking about most transhumanist discussions and communities online is the overriding concern with living long enough to be able to afford the immanent uploading or immortality treatments. This kind of nihilistic, lifestyle transhumanism is far more visible than any kind of, say, “transhumanism for the children”.

Worrisome, as well, is transhumanist tolerance of – if not enthusiastic embrace of – cranks. Dilettantes arguing over the technological requirements for uploading to substrate, or ersatz enterprises that produce no usable analyses or discoveries, are the futurist equivalent of “Sex is back”: deluded amateurs who have no idea how irrelevant they are to real progress and real problems.

Then there are the occasional PR nightmares. This proposal to engineer the extermination of 99.9% of the human race so that the remaining few million can enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, for instance, is maintained on a major transhumanist blog community and news portal. Most comments raise objections, but a communitywide condemnation is noticeably absent.

Building a transhumanist counterweight to religion, bioethics, and industry hype will not be easy.

This Wednesday, May 30, the University of California, Irvine administration will try to form a human chain around the big park in the center of campus. Another closeup of the poster.

The administration engages in damage control. Closeup of a poster on the University of California, Irvine campus, 2007 May 25.

Discussions of intellectual property laws, and what might be done to loosen them, often hit a snag: what is the individual to do? Too often there are just the personal acts of resistance – the copying and distribution of movies, music, and software, accompanied by bleats of “information should be free”, “culture should be free”, and other such nonsense. All quite selfish and pathetic, and almost always, I’d wager, unaccompanied by any channeling of the pirated savings toward the open source projects, non-corporate artists, and consumer advocacy that would help render such sordid information embezzlement unappealing in the first place.

Congratulations, Sparky, through your expropriation efforts you’ve filled this year’s fad media deployment toy with gigabytes of mind-numbing, mass-produced schlock. You even slapped some of the schlock together and uploaded a digital collage to your favorite video sharing site. Way to fight that power. That’s not rebellion. That’s free advertising, whether the copyright holders recognize it or not. Your HegePod and your computer aren’t the only tools taking up space in your bedroom.

For the intellectual property that matters – the computer code, the genetic code, the medical treatments – the individual needs an option other than “GIMME!”. One alternative is “Sabotage!” Take something like India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library that can be used to block a corporation’s medical patent – then find some way to link it and new patent applications up to a crowdsourcing or distributed computing project. Encourage groups of people to cut deals with researchers on donated genetic material before someone else can take out the gene sequence patents.

Problem is, efforts like these would require startup organizing and technical knowhow. They’d also represent a pragmatic front, one less given to whuffie-wishing, utopian grandstanding and one more willing to subvert today’s tools to solve tomorrow’s problems.

The Muslim Student Union (MSU) at the University of California, Irvine held “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” this week, May 14-17. I took some photographs.

Part 1: The running of the Jew
Part 2: Establishing shots
Part 3: Support our troops
Part 4: Two ring sideshow
Part 5: Lost in the shuffle
Part 6: What what what?
Part 7: He is The Great Cornholio
Part 8: Throwing stones
Part 9: Throwing rocks

Anteaters for Israel set up a booth across the square from the MSU’s wall. Here it is Tuesday, next to a booth from the California College Republicans.

Yes, that’s a cardboard standup of Ronald Reagan at the College Republicans booth.

The Anteaters for Israel booth expanded a bit Wednesday…

… and again Thursday, the day of the Amir Abdel Malik Ali talk.

Thursday afternoon’s “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” event attracted this fool. He walked around the wall, the steps, and the speaker, chanting a high-pitched “li li li li” and proclaiming, “Death to infidels” and such in a bad impersonation of an Arabic accent. Note the rolled-up paper “dynamite” taped to his chest.

Campus police quickly stopped him. After a couple of minutes, he removed the costume dynamite and was allowed to continue…

… for over 2 hours. A few students took pictures, but most ignored him.

The fool made at least a couple of laps behind the “Death to Apartheid” banner while Amir Abdel Malik Ali was speaking.

Amir Abdel Malik Ali spoke Thursday, referring frequently to “the Zionist Jewish lobby”.

I missed most of it. Evidently “you’re the new Nazis” was one of the more inflammatory statements. A small portion of Mr. Ali’s speech later that evening is also available on YouTube. (You might have some trouble if you want to search for the YouTube clip later, though, since the poster cleverly gave it the description “Anti-Semetic speach” [sic].)

The audience was slightly larger than those of the previous 3 days.

Once again, fervent discussion followed, mostly involving pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli activists. Mr. Ali, like the other speakers and counter-demonstrators from outside campus, seemed inclined to lecture in response to questions. When I noticed students speaking with each other, in contrast, their interactions sounded more like dialogue, and their demeanors were far more respectful and civil.

I missed Wednesday’s speaker, anti-Zionist Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, but the two camps got into what looked like a serious discussion afterward.

Some Israel supporters have taken to wearing black T-shirts with “got peace? got Israel” logos.

Nothing to see here… really.

I overheard a couple of disagreements between Muslim Student Union supporters and Anteaters for Israel supporters about the clowns. Yes, clowns. A couple of older men came dressed as clowns to protest the MSU’s wall, Wednesday’s speaker, or both.

One panel expresses militant sentiment.

These three photos are of the pro-Hamas panel. I saw no mention of Fatah.

The flagpoles near Langson library, as close to a campus square as UC Irvine’s circular Ring Road allows. Afternoon speakers set up in the roped-off area at the bottom of the steps. To the left is the MSU’s “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” display. To the right are booths from California College Republicans and Anteaters for Israel, right next to a sandwichboard-style sign advertising the MSU activities this week.

This year the wall runs parallel to the thoroughfare.

The wall receives passing attention. One of the panels (facing to the left, in the picture) is a video kiosk that appears to be running a pro-Palestine, anti-Israel documentary.

The wall has an opening to walk through. This caption is above it.

The Israeli flag is spattered with fake blood.

The Muslim Student Union at the University of California, Irvine is putting on a 4-day “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” event this week. The centerpiece is a large wall display, representing the border between Israel and Palestine, in the campus’s designated free speech zone. I’ll be posting photographs of the wall, a few at a time; all are also in a Flickr set. The below are among the most incendiary parts of the display.

Okay, the serpent often represents the enemy in propaganda posters, but at least there aren’t wild-eyed, hook-nosed caricatures of… oh, wait.

Who doesn’t love an Anthony Hopkins parody? It’s not as if anyone’s actually suggesting that Jews eat children or anything… oh, wait.

Reminiscent of “The King in Yellow”.