Presentation Preview for Jessica's Research on Mind-Machine Identity and Interaction.

This week I will give a presentation on the research I have done so far on the topic of Transhumanism and the vast array of technologies we should see with it including, but not limited to: Cybernetics, Neural Engineering, Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, Bioinformatics, and Brain-Machine interface technologies such as Cyberkinetics (controlling machine with the mind). I will present the most relevant technologies and a few of Ray Kurzweil's ideas about exponential growth and the technological singularity, then bring these ideas back to my basic research questions with the following points:

1.) Technology is developing at an exponential rate. Those technologies that transform human-computer interface into a more intimate relationship, are expanding both human and computer capabilities.

2.) These capabilities include change in the intelligence of humans by connecting the physical brain to a computer and the internet to access information otherwise more difficult to attain, and a change in computer intelligence by developing stronger A.I technology.

3.) As in Eisenstein's ideas about the revolutionizing printing press, a human ability to access all of human knowledge using technology that melds the brain to the internet will cause a fundamental change in human identity, the product of self-awareness.

4.) If computers too become self-aware as is a human brain, then an entirely new concept of person will emerge, beyond what we could ever imagine in the past. Ray Kurzweil says that A.I will exceed natural human intelligence which has been unrivaled by everything else on Earth until now.

5.) What we see is the natural process of biological evolution developing a brain with consciousness, understanding itself (human science and technology), and creating a new form of itself by both manipulating biological evolution (genetic and neural engineering), and creating non-biological consciousness with computers.

I will mainly focus on machine and human consciousness when it is dramatically altered using technology, and the future of identity and personhood. Drawing on the idea of the singularity and transhumanism/posthumanism, I will describe current predictions of how human behavior will change. The acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, creation of new technologies to increase