Recession fears can wreak havoc on retirement plans and nights of sleep but they also can do wonders for the stock market, says the leader of a multi-billion dollar investment firm.

In a newly released interview, taped last month, Ariel Investments Co-CEO Mellody Hobson says worries of an economic downturn offer up a trading opportunity that some may not expect.

The fact that we are on recession watch probably bodes well for the stock market in a very weird way, she says.

Hobson, a longtime proponent of value investing and admirer of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A,BRK-B) CEO Warren Buffett, invoked her financial role model to explain why.

As Warren Buffett says, the market climbs a wall of worry. And that worry that is out there continues to create opportunity, she says.

On Friday, a mixed jobs report functioned as an economic Rorschach test,confirmingthe recession fears of some whileallayingthe doomsday concerns of others. On the whole, marketsrallied on the news. The jobs report came after a week of troubling data that includes adropin manufacturing activity for the second consecutive month and a World Trade Organizationpredictionthat global trade will fall dramatically.

When panicky investors turn their backs, that gives savvy traders a chance to find undervalued stocks, Hobson said.

Ariel Investments Co-CEO Mellody Hobson appears on Influencers with Andy Serwer.

Even though we've had this tremendous run in the stock market over the last decade, we're still finding value, because when companies disappoint, they basically get shot, she says. They get left for dead. And it's those businesses that get left for dead that create an opportunity for us as value investors.

Hobson is the co-CEO of Ariel Investments, a firm with assets totaling $12.9 billion, where she worked for nearly the past three decades. HerTed Talkon challenging racial inequality, given in 2014, has been viewed more than 3.7 million times.

She made the comments during a conversation that aired in an episode of Yahoo Finances Influencers with Andy Serwer, a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment.

For her part, Hobson said she does not see evidence of an impending recession.

We might see the economy slow, but we're not seeing a recession, she says. We just don't see it right now.

Speaking before the release of Octobers jobs numbers, she said the recent employment data suggests an economy with strong upsides.

When you look at some basic statistics, the employment numbers are so compelling. We've seen some wage inflation, which helps with consumer spending. Consumer confidence has stayed very, very high. There are a lot of positives.

I would say that my view right now is, the market certainly is fully valued, she adds. However, we think the fundamentals, especially in the U.S., are still very good.

Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter: @serwer.

Read more:

President Trump's way of communicating is 'hurting civility': Ariel Investments Co-CEO Mellody Hobson

Former Cisco CEO John Chambers: 'The extremes are controlling a lot of politics'

The Property Brothers say these are two of the best cities for real estate investment

Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, SmartNews, LinkedIn, YouTube, and reddit.

Go here to read the rest:
Fear of a recession 'bodes well for the stock market,' Ariel Investments Co-CEO Mellody Hobson - Yahoo Finance

Technological advancement often brings disruption and democratization. It replaces the old with the new and facilitates the rapid expansion of access to specialized tools and information that previously had been the purview of a select few. And nowhere is this more true in the 21st century than the financial services industry. The first big wave came when online trading platforms like E-Trade democratized stock market investing. Now, newer fintech startups like PeerStreet are using crowdfunding technology to revolutionize the world of real estate investing.

How?

In the past, if you wanted to borrow a large sum of money to start a business or buy a house, your only option was to go to a bank and apply for a loan. Thus, only banks had access to highly profitable debt investments. And, obviously, they had no interest in letting anybody else have a share of that pie. However, in reality banks are just middlemen. They make a profit by loaning out the money they get from everyday people.

Now companies like PeerStreet are using technology to remove the middlemen. And its a pretty huge deal.

PeerStreet is a peer-to-peer real estate investing platform that uses technology popularized by sites like Kickstarter and GoFundMe to create a revolutionary new microlending system. Its crowdfunding for mortgages that breaks standard real estate loans into smaller pieces that individuals can purchase. Investors get to earn 10-percent or more on their investments, and borrowers get the money they need to buy a house or run a business.

By doing this, PeerStreet connects investors with borrowers in a way never before possible, busting the centuries-old monopoly on real estate-backed debt investments that banks have enjoyed.

The entire process is guided by high-tech data analytics. PeerStreet shops for loans from reputable private lenders across the United States. Then they use their own proprietary AI analytics engine to evaluate each loan and curate a pool of safe, high-quality real estate debt investments. PeerStreet then sells pieces of these loans to its investors.

Of course, curating a pool of loans is only the beginning. PeerStreet also uses award-winning Automated Investing technology to take the guesswork out of building investment portfolios. With PeerStreets Automated Investing, all you have to do is select your investment criteria, such as interest rate or loan term, and you will be notified when loans that meet your criteria become available.

Unfortunately, because peer-to-peer investing is relatively new, right now the PeerStreet platform is only available to accredited investors. According to current SEC regulation, accredited investors are individuals with a net worth greater than $1 million or an annual income greater than $200,000.

Luckily, if you dont fit into that category, theres reason to hope things might change soon. Back in 2015 the SEC officially opened up the crowdfunding marketplace to non-accredited investors. There are still strict rules in place that limit the amount you can invest per year to either $2,000 or 5% of your yearly income or net worth, whichever is greater. But thats way better than nothing. And it means PeerStreets revolutionary automated investing tech might one day be available to everyone.

Futurism fans: To create this content, a non-editorial team worked with an affiliate partner. We may collect a small commission on items purchased through this page. This post does not necessarily reflect the views or the endorsement of the Futurism.com editorial staff.

See more here:
This Peer-to-Peer Real Estate Investing Platform Is Changing the Mortgage Game - Futurism

Retirement is like a long vacation in Las Vegas. The goal is to enjoy it to the fullest, but not so fully that you run out of money," says British author Jonathan Clements. What can help you to ensure that you dont run out of money is having a two-pronged investment strategy that ascertains that you have adequate monthly income and at the same time, your corpus lasts long enough so that you never really fall short. You can do this by splitting your corpus in a way that you have regular income and are also able to accumulate for the future.

Regular income

According to Mumbai-based certified financial planner and author of Mindful Retirement Kiran Telang, One part of the retirement corpus should go into a pool that will generate a fixed regular monthly income. This will go into fixed-income instruments."

For regular income, your options are investing in fixed-income products such as Senior Citizens Savings Scheme (SCSS), post office monthly income scheme (POMIS), bank fixed deposit (FD) and liquid- or ultra short-term debt funds.

SCSS is an ideal choice for seniors looking for regular income and it offers higher returns (8.60% per annum) as compared to other similar instruments. Invest in SCSS to get safe, fixed and regular cash flow," said Anuj Shah, chief financial planner, Wealth 360, a Mumbai-based financial planning firm. The investing tenure of SCSS is five years, which can be extended by three years once it matures. The interest is payable quarterly and is fully taxable.

However, investment in SCSS also gives tax benefits under Section 80C. Invest 15 lakh with you as the first account holder and wife as the second holder. Open another SCSS of 15 lakh with the spouse as the first holder and you as the second," said Anuj, talking about how to maximize tax benefit. SCSS also offers the highest post-tax returns compared to other fixed-income products such as five-year tax-saving FDs and National Savings Certificate (NSC).

Another safe and regular income-generating product is POMIS, which has a five-year tenure and gives an interest of 7.6% per annum payable monthly. The investment limit is capped at 9 lakh under joint ownership and 4.5 lakh under single ownership," said Anuj. However, this comes without any tax benefit at the time of investment. The interest is fully taxable and it also has a lock-in period of five years.

Bank FDs are also a popular choice for retirees with tenures ranging from one to 10 years. Currently, State Bank of India (SBI) gives a rate of 6.75% per annum for its three-year FD. Most banks offer senior citizens an extra 0.25-0.50% per annum than regular FDs. For instance, SBI offers 0.50% extra to senior citizens. With FDs, you can choose different tenures and pace out the maturity as per your time frame. However, compared to SCSS and POMIS, interest on FD is lower and fully taxable. But remember, senior citizens can also claim deduction on interest earned up to 50,000 in a single financial year under Section 80TTB from all these instruments.

Then there are annuity plans. To start getting immediate annuity from a life insurance company, you need to make a lump sum investment. There are a number of options to choose from, like an annuity for life, annuity with return of purchase price, life annuity that increases by 5% every year with a return of purchase price on death, and life annuity that increases by 5% every year without return of purchase price on death. An annuity that increases every year tries to play catch-up with inflation, thus helping you more or less maintain the same standard of living.

However, most financial planners consider it the last option due to low returns and lack of liquidity. We do not recommend an annuity plan strongly. But it depends on the nature of the investor; if that person is comfortable with the assured income and he doesnt want to take the risk of longevity, then annuity can be a good product for him," said Rohit Shah, founder and chief executive officer, Getting You Rich, a financial planning firm. However, one should also keep in mind that the corpus is given up forever once you opt for an annuity scheme, added Rohit.

Funds required for the short term can also be parked into liquid or ultra-short debt funds. With debt funds, you have a chance to get higher returns than FDs. Debt funds are also more tax efficient than investment in fixed deposit," said Rohit. Returns from debt instruments are considered as capital gains and enjoy indexation benefits in the long run (if held for more than three years, long-term capital gains are taxed at 20% but after adjusting for inflation), whereas returns from FD are considered as income from other sources and no indexation benefits can be claimed. Systematic withdrawal plans (SWPs) from debt mutual funds can also help you earn regular income. They allow investors to withdraw a specified amount regularly.

Accumulation

When investing and accumulating a retirement corpus, you need to remember two things. One, inflation can eat into a corpus that seems large enough to see you through retirement and two, considering increased life expectancy, it is important to plan and save for a longer retirement period.

To beat inflation and to cater to a long period, it is important to dip into equities. After eight to 10 years, fixed-income part (investments) will not be sufficient. This is when you will need your equity portfolio to come into play," said Telang.

However, you need to choose the equity funds you invest in carefully. Since a senior citizens risk-taking appetite is less, pure equity fund is not recommended. But a combination of equity and debt like hybrid funds can be taken," said Rohit. Apart from equity, one may consider investing in 7.75% RBI savings (taxable) bond, some portion in gold, and also in real estate investment trust (REITs) in sometime," said Rohit.

Remember that the goal should be to enjoy retired life to its fullest, but not exhaust the retirement corpus in the process.

View original post here:
Ready investment blueprint to have a stress-free retired life - Livemint

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Winter Mraz says she loves having her keys in her hand but she does not mean holding them. She has actually had her door key implanted into her left hand in the form of a microchip.

In her right hand, she has had another microchip implant that acts as her business card but could also be used to store important medical information for use in the case of an emergency.

The 31-year-old engineer also has a magnet in one finger that allows her to sense electro-magnetic fields, which she says helps in her work.

But not all her body upgrades are practical. Her latest procedure is to have two LED implants, that turn on when a magnet is passed above them, illuminating her skin from inside.

Why? "Because they are sparkly and I'm a magpie," she says. "I like things that light up."

Winter is one of a growing number of people who call themselves "transhumanists".

It is the belief that the humans can improve beyond their physical and mental limitations and "upgrade" their bodies by incorporating technology.

For Winter, her first "cyber-enhancements" were not voluntary, they were through the hospital after a serious car crash in the United States that fractured her back, both her ankles and her knees.

Her back was bolted together by surgeons and one of her kneecaps was replaced with one that was 3D-printed, on the NHS.

"If it was not for my cybernetic kneecap I would not be able to walk," she told BBC Scotland's The Nine.

After her accident she moved on to voluntary personal modifications such as the microchips in her hands.

The RFID (radio-frequency-identification) chip in her left hand works on the lock in her house door in the same way as many workplace security cards operate. This means she does not have to carry keys and keeps her hand free for her walking cane.

The NFC (near-field communication) chip in her right hand has many potential uses. It is the same type of chip that allows phones and tablets to easily share data with each other.

Winter says: "I think saying that you should not alter your body and you should not change your body is a very ableist way to go about living. People who are disabled don't have that choice. It is made for us."

Steven Ryall, a 26-year-old technical operator from Manchester, says he wants to have chips implanted to make "smart hands".

"We have smart TVs, smart phones, everything is smart," he says. "Why can't I be smart?"

Steven believes that transhumanism is the logical next step in human development. He wants be able to programme the technology in his body to respond to his personal biology.

His "technological baptism" was at a private clinic in Leicester, where he had his first implant.

The microchips are usually delivered by a syringe into the back of the hand.

"I am slowly turning myself into part machine," he says. "I don't mind being biological but if I could be part mechanical that is so much more awesome than just my plain self."

Steven says the chip is "essentially" like those in a contactless bank card. "I can get an RFID or NFC reader and hook it up to a chip that I programme and then get that chip to recognise the chip in my hand and do whatever I want," he says.

Steven is an evangelist for humans "upgrading" themselves but he can understand why people might think it is an extreme thing to do. He says friends and family think it is "weird and kooky" but he believes that in the next five years they will start getting into it too.

Winter says wearable tech such as the Apple watch and Fitbit and other "doctor on your wrist" health monitors have taken off in the past few years and she believes that implants are the next logical step.

She says: "I don't think implants are inevitable but I think they are getting better, longer-lasting, cooler and have more functionality. It's going to be one more option people have."

Steven says he can easily see a time when companies are asking employees to have implants for security ID to access building or computer networks.

"I think that people would see it as an extreme thing because they are looking from a historical perspective, they are not looking forward," he says.

At the moment there are loose regulations on who can do it and most implants are done by tattoo artists and body piercers.

There are some people who are taking things into their own hands by buying the tools off websites to perform the procedure themselves.

Bio-hacker Jenova Rain, who implanted Steven's chip at her Leicester practice, said she was doing five implants a week and the numbers were rising as interest grows.

Although regulations on bio-hacking specifically are sparse, Jenova says she is covered to do implants as a tattoo artist and piercer.

Even though she promotes the idea of upgrading yourself through her YouTube channel and website she has no chips or "upgrades" herself. She says they would be "useless" for her.

Dr Mary Neal, professor of medicine and ethics at Strathclyde University, said she was "not surprised" more people were getting involved but there needed to be better regulation.

She said the procedure was similar to other body modification such as botox but there were many ethical discussions that needed to be had around bodily autonomy and regulation.

Dr Neal also said there were safety risks with people buying the equipment from online sites and doing the procedures from home.

The Scottish government told BBC Scotland's The Nine it intended to regulate procedures carried out by non-healthcare professionals and it was consulting on how this could be done.

A spokesman said it was looking at the "most proportionate and appropriate measures" and the government's priority was the safety of those involved.

Read this article:
The transhumanists who are 'upgrading' their bodies - BBC News

No of course there shouldnt really be a religion based on The Bionic Woman that would require you to watch the show and it is cheesy and definitely for kids, laughs Ana Matronic, pop diva and Jaime Sommers obsessive.

We are having this conversation because, in her teens, she turned her fictional hero into a quasi deity the combination of the forces of science and nature and placed her at the centre of a belief system called Bionic Love. While she may now mock her fanzine flights of fancy, she still has faith in technology to transform humanity.

Matronic has been captivated by robots and cyborgs since C-3PO squeaked into her life at the age of three. Her right arm is a declaration of love a half-sleeve tattoo which began as a mishmash of cogs and springs, la Sommers, but now incorporates other favourites such as R2-D2 and Maria, the female robot from Fritz Langs 1927 film Metropolis.

Matronic, who was originally called Ana Lynch, has always been attracted to the blurring of boundaries. This is the woman who was once the only female drag queen in San Franciscos The Trannnyshack. That was before she became lead singer of the self-consciously flamboyant Scissor Sisters: a band that revelled in its own campness.

Today, she has lost none of that flamboyance; she still hosts the BBC Radio 2 programme Dance Devotion. But, an academic at heart, she also tours the country evangelising about transhumanism the merging of human and machine as well as warning of the dangers.

Later this month, she will be appearing at an event in the Dundee University Festival of the Future, along with Graeme Gerard Halliday, aka Hallidonto, a Scottish-born, London-based artist, who creates images of cyborgs, and Kadine James, Creative Tech Lead with Hobs 3D, a company that specialises in 3D printing.

Im really interested in all aspects of technology, from the three-minute pop song to AI [Artificial Intelligence] and advances in medical treatment, says Matronic.

I am interested in how things work and how they affect humanity. Technology holds so much promise, but it moves faster than governments. Thats a dangerous thing and something we ought to talk about.

The Dundee University event is timely. Not long ago, cyborgs were of mostly hypothetical interest, explored in science and speculative fiction, but not generally regarded as a contemporary reality impacting on everyday behaviour.

In the past year or so, however, transhumanism appears to have entered the mainstream; every day seems to bring a news story that could have come straight from Charlie Brookers Black Mirror; a story that challenges our preconceptions about what it means to be human.

Some of the technology we are seeing changes us physically. Blade prostheses that allow amputee athletes to run as fast as able-bodied ones for example, and power-suits that strengthen the muscles of elderly people, mean cyborgs are already in our midst.

Just last week, we learned a Frenchman paralysed in a nightclub accident had walked again thanks to a mind-controlled exo-skeleton suit. Recording devices implanted either side of his head between the skin and the brain read brainwaves and send them to a nearby computer, where they are converted into instructions for controlling the exo-skeleton.

Technology is developing so rapidly that both scientists and philosophers are pondering the possibility that we may eventually be able to transform ourselves into beings with abilities so great as to merit the label post-human.

The extent to which the concept of transhumanism (if not the word itself) has entered the public consciousness could be seen in the recent Russell T Davies drama Years And Years in which one of the main characters, Bethany, wants to become part-machine.

She has mobile phone implants in her hands, camera implants in her eyes and brain implants that allow her to make a mental connection with the internet. Set just a few years hence, and building on existing technology, the interesting thing about the series is not how futuristic it seems, but how feasible. Even when, towards the end, her aunt Edith uploads her consciousness to the cloud so she can continue to exist after death, it does not feel too far-fetched.

Martine Rothblatt, the founder of SiriusXM Satellite Radio, a super-fascinating person No 1 on my fantasy dinner party list is already developing the technology to create a mind file, says Matronic. The idea is you gather as much information on yourself as you can so that when you die your mind-file can be downloaded into a phone or into a robot and you or rather a facsimile of you can live on for your family. There are also people working on substrate independent minds brains that dont need a body to function. And people who are trying to extend life or eradicate death.

But if death becomes an option then the fairy tale of unlimited economic growth becomes even more of a fairy tale. And thats before we start thinking about storage. If you are a digital person, where do you live? And if the storage facility is so big it can store digital people then the computational power of that facility is not a what but a who. The whole thing is a crazy, crazy rabbit hole I love to jump down.

The first robot

Matronics right; it is a rabbit hole, and the further you go down it the more you lose yourself in an ethical maze.

At its best, technology has the power to tap into human potential; to make us the best we can be. When Makoto Nishimura created Japans first robot, Gakutensoku (the name means learning from natural law), he was conceived as an ideal.

At an exhibition to mark Emperor Hirohitos ascension to the throne in 1926 the year before Metropolis was released spectators were awe-struck as the God-like bronze figure appeared before them clutching a mace and arrow and smiled beatifically. Nishimura believed robots were a continuum of humanity a natural evolution. If humans are the children of nature, then robots are the grandchildren of nature, he said.

Yet, ever since the industrial revolution, western society has tended to have an adversarial attitude towards machines, viewing them as sleekit creatures who will steal our jobs or turn against us, like Frankensteins monster. In literature too, we are accustomed to the idea of scientific progress producing dystopias such as Airstrip One in 1984 or the boarding school for clones in Kazuo Ishiguros Never Let Me Go.

Overemphasising the downsides of technological advance may be discriminatory, says Matronic. When we have conversations about the evils of technology, we are being ablist. If you say, social media is bad, I will show you someone with locked-in syndrome or crippling social anxiety for whom it has opened up the possibility of friendship.

Technology could also eradicate paralysis; there would be no more quadriplegics. Also, at present we only use 10 per cent of our brains. If we have machines that can help us explore more of that, then its amazing.

Even so, neither Matronic nor Hallidonto is naive. They understand the potential pitfalls of transhumanism in a capitalist society where efficiency and profits are the most powerful drivers.

Technology initially developed for positive purposes may be subverted for negative ones, while the push to create a super-race of better, fitter, more cognitively capable humans veers perilously close to eugenics.

And then there is the question of marginalisation. We are already living in a world where those who do not own a smartphone are disadvantaged. How much greater will that socio-economic inequality become once it is possible to pay for superior physical strength and brain power?

Professor Kevin Warwick, the worlds leading expert in cybernetics, has been called the first cyborg. In the late 1990s/early 2000s, he experimented with his own body. First, he had an RIFD transmitter implanted under his skin which allowed him to control doors, lights, heaters and other devices. Then he had a BrainGate electrode array fitted which allowed him to control a robotic arm on the other side of the Atlantic a feat that conjures up the image of Thing in the Addams Family. Finally, he linked his nervous system electrically to his wifes in such a way that every time she closed her hand, his brain received a pulse. Was that not freaky? It was very intimate, he says. You are getting signals from someone elses body and nobody else knows.

The link cannot yet be made brain to brain, but when it can, it will be the basis of thought communication: telepathy, but for real.

Back in the 90s, Warwick faced criticism, not technically, just people saying: Youre a buffoon, because they didnt understand what I was doing. In the end, of course, the joke was on them.

Yet today, some people are still dubious, not about the science, but about the morality. The ethical dilemmas sparked by some of these developments are huge. For example, if you can control an arm miles from where you are, then presumably you can use it to commit crimes. Meanwhile the linking up of brains if achieved would be a useful way to communicate with someone who couldnt speak but, in the wrong hands, it could be used for coercive control.

Warwick accepts all this, but seems unperturbed. As a scientist, you are aware of things potentially going in a negative way, but you hope society will look at applications and say: Yes, this one is great it will help people and No, we dont think this one should be allowed.

Asked if it would be ethical to amputate a normal human leg in order to replace it with blades that allowed an athlete to run faster, he says yes.

I cant see a problem. We have to look to the future. At the moment, we have a body. The body does things OK and the brain controls it and its all a pretty limited package. But we have the possibility of redefining what our body and our brains can do. Why should anyone lag behind with ordinary human body parts when they could have something thats much better?

When I suggest this will exacerbate the disenfranchisement of the most vulnerable, he implies a degree of inequality is a social inevitability and points out that wealthy people can already pay for physical enhancements through cosmetic surgery.

Not everyone is this sanguine. Hallidonto is as passionate about robots as Matronic. Growing up in the 80s, the first cyborg he encountered was the one in The Terminator. I remember sitting on the sofa with my dad at three years old and being completely traumatised by it, he says. Later, I had Darth Vader toys and I would pretend I was wearing a robotic suit. I would feel quite powerful.

When he was 12, Hallidonto suffered a collapsed lung. He was put in a machine and experienced visceral, morphine-induced dreams about babies with wires coming out of their eyes. Then when he was 25, he had a brain injury on a holiday in Germany and it changed how he saw the world.

A graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College in Dundee, his work has always featured robots. At the launch of his exhibition, Cyborg Cadavers, in London last week, he explored some of the pitfalls. I spoke about the Anthropocene and the Promethean allegory and pointed out that if we dont watch what we are doing we may end up, not with the body we desire, but with the body that is required, he says.

With technology developing so rapidly, Matronic believes there is an urgent need for tech companies and governments to talk about ethics before it is too late.

Most of the negative stories about robots/cyborgs, from Frankenstein on, involve someone with a God complex thinking they can do what the Creator does. Those stories are a warning against hubris.

So we definitely need to have conversations about morality and every tech company should have its own ethicist. They should be saying things like: Dear Elon Musk loving the SpaceX stuff, but do we really need a flamethrower?

Matronic says some of her worst fears, technologically speaking, are already being realised with Facebooks lack of transparency and peoples identities and data being turned into a commodity.

I am really concerned about autonomous weapons too, she says. Mines are horrible enough, but guns that can walk and speak? That is a terrifying prospect. I dont think they should be allowed to exist.

The potential for technology to reinforce inequality will have to be addressed too because otherwise only some people will lag behind. It will be: Oh my God did you get the brain update? No, I am still working with version 2.4. Well, version 3 just came out and its amazing.

Chair of the Dundee University event, Karen Petrie, associate dean for learning and teaching in science and engineering, is developing educational software that can adapt to the learning speed of individual students.

Her biggest fear is the one feminist activist Caroline Criado Perez touches on in her book Invisible Women: that as computers take over more and more tasks, they will replicate existing biases.

Most AIs are built on machine learning, she says. That means they take a large quantity of data, mine that data and learn behaviour. Unfortunately, if theres any bias in that data, even if it is implicit bias, then the machine will learn it. A good example of this is a big tech firm that was trying to use a machine learning algorithm to scan CVs and work out who they should or shouldnt employ.

However, until now this tech firm has employed 95 per cent men, so when this algorithm was used it pretty much screened out all the women.

Body hacktivism

For all the potential problems, the notion that technology could transform us aesthetically, cognitively, spiritually cannot fail to excite the imagination. The myriad possibilities it throws up are proving a rich source of inspiration for both artists and philosophers.

Indeed they have engendered a new art form: body hacktivism. Tight restrictions on the kinds of surgery that can be done on humans has led to a school of DIY body modification artists, who carry out work on themselves or others. There is Neil Harbisson, who sees the world in black and white, but wears an antennae that translates the frequency of colours into sounds; Tim Cannon, who had magnets implanted in his fingers; Lukas Zpira, author of the body hacktivism manifesto, who offers tongue splitting, implants, and subincision (the splitting of the penis); and Steve Haworth, who specialises in subdermal and transdermal implants, such as the Metal Mohawk a row of spikes inserted into the head to replicate a punk haircut.

Despite her fixation with cyborgs, Matronic is a late adopter of new technology. I am last to everything I never even have the latest smartphone. But she believes the future will be more fluid. Others have connected this fluidity to transgenderism; after all, if you can change the human body at will, then sex and gender become less important. And if your consciousness can exist without corporeal form then, arguably, they cease to matter at all.

If you see yourself as a religious person and you believe in the soul, then, when your soul leaves, is it male or female? says Matronic.

You have just your body you can be anything. Gender really is a construct something that is mandated by society. Different societies have different expressions of gender and different codes. I think as we expand as humans, we understand there are different ways of being and definitions loosen, so we are going to have new words and new definitions and new genders.

Everything will be new, new, new. It might be scary for some people and difficult conversations will have to be had but I believe that us humans learn to human better as we evolve and I look to the future with hope.

How Robots Are Shaping the World We Live In, 6.30pm, October 19, Juniper Auditorium, V&A, Dundee

Continued here:
Insight: Transhumanists believe in the bionic body beautiful - The Scotsman

by David Lewin

Should we expect the schools of the future to be saturated with technology? It has been widely reported (e.g. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/319288) that some leaders within major Silicon Valley tech companies have, rather hypocritically, chosen to limit the influence of their products on their own children, by restricting access to screen time and social media. Take the following report:

You cant put your face in a device and expect to develop a long-term attention span, [said] Taewoo Kim, chief AI engineer at the machine-learning startup One Smart Lab A practicing Buddhist, Kim is teaching his nieces and nephews, ages 4 to 11, to meditate and appreciate screen-free games and puzzles. Once a year he takes them on tech-free silent retreats at nearby Buddhist temples. (https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-parents-raising-their-kids-tech-free-red-flag-2018-2)

Other educational spaces also appear to provide shelter from technology saturation, for instance Waldorf schools, which prioritise outdoor learning and low-tech play. This concern to shelter students reflects certain perceived risks of technology saturation: distractedness and diminished attention span, heightened depression and anxiety, poor health and obesity and, in extreme cases, suicide. Limiting access to technology has become newsworthy because of the prevailing assumption that technology enhances education. Whatever the truth of the matter, we currently know little about the long-term impact of many technologies on the educational formation of young people: the influence of technology seems widespread, indeterminate, and seldom given sufficient justification. This knowledge gap is by no means unique to modern technologys educational interventions, but is at the foundation of education itself: there is an interpretive gap between what educators intend and what students learn.

This raises two general questions: First, how do we justify influencing others? If the answer to this question is basically consequentialist (because the outcomes of influence are good), then we are presented with a second question which problematizes this response: namely, what are we to make of the gap between our intentions to influence or enhance, and the outcomes of these intentions?

I would argue that human enhancements have existed as long as education itself. Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg (https://nickbostrom.com/cognitive.pdf) have suggested that education may be usefully labelled as a conventional means of human enhancement, as distinct from nominally unconventional means of enhancement, such as nootropic drugs, gene therapy, or neural implants. This distinction has its place, though Bostrom and Sandberg acknowledge the continuum between enhancements that are conventional (working through education) and unconventional (drawing upon recent technologies), making the distinction fluid, indeterminate and contextual. Caffeine is one thing, but gene editing for purposes of non-therapeutic interventions (e.g. selecting or removing traits in reproduction) remains controversial. Of course, convention is a rather unstable form of justification. In general, the question of the justification of unconventional enhancement parallels that of conventional enhancement. It is one of the key questions that shapes education theory: namely, how are our intentions to influence justified?

The gap between the intentions and the outcomes could be understood as a weakness or risk intrinsic to education. Gert Biesta speaks of the beautiful risk of education (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMqFcVoXnTI), arguing that it is a misconception to see education as a stable relation between inputs and outputs in which we can eliminate the unexpected or the risky. To construe education without risk is to miss something of its beauty. Education can make use of, or better, relies on this gap in order to create spaces that are essentially open to something unbidden, an opening that involves, as Hannah Arendt puts it, the coming of the new and young. By contrast, the sciences of learning have worked to eliminate this gap through the development of what is known as the behavioural objectives model in which measurable educational objectives and outcomes are made explicit and become the sole target of education. The behavioural objectives model can be interpreted as the expression of technical subjectivity in which all forms of insecurity are eliminated in favor of pure transmission, and the risks of exposure to the unbidden are minimised. The idea that behavioural objectives ensure control of the educational process is seductive but, illusory and ultimately corrosive since, as Arendt, Biesta and others have argued, the educational event itself depends upon the introduction of something radically new. What makes the new radical here is that there is a discontinuity between the conditions in which newness may arrive, and the very arrival itself. Something about the new is necessarily unanticipated. Without the new, education becomes the reproduction of the old which, echoing Adornos critiques of Halbbildung (half-education), is only ever half the educational story.

This gap between educational intention and what actually takes place demands something of those involved: speculative, or interpretive judgements. We might say that interpretation constitutes the pedagogical relation between educator and student: the educator speculates that the student is educable, projecting ideas about what capacities the student could realise through certain educational influences; the student speculates about what the educator intends and is capable of, e.g. that they are (or are not) both interested in and able to support the students growth. Then there is speculation about the outcomes of the educational event: the enhancement of a capacity may not be immediately obvious to the student or educator, taking days, months or even years to be properly realised or recognised. In short, there is a great deal of faith in pedagogical structures, processes and relations. This is significant because unconventional means of enhancement likewise involve speculation, risk, and judgement. Just as writing may enhance or diminish human memory, so ubiquitous access to google may extend and undermine certain cognitive capacities; at least an ambivalence should be noted. Unconventional means of enhancement through, for instance, drugs like Ritalin or Modafinil, might be thought to involve unacceptable risks in comparison to conventional schooling, but risks are part of any effort to influence because they are defined by the gap described between intention and outcome.

In her essay The Crisis in Education, Arendt says that hope always hangs on the new which every generation brings; but precisely because we can base our hope only on this, we destroy everything if we so try to control the new that we, the old, can dictate how it will look. Indeed, the older generation cannot fully anticipate changes brought on by the young but can, indeed must, show the world and let go, hoping that in doing so conditions are created in which the new may arrive. Education involves creating conditions in which it is possible for the new to come in to the world, conditions that might also be described in terms of openness: openness to the mystery, the unbidden, the Other, or as self-transcendence.

I would not be the first to challenge the view that the technologically defined immortality of transhumanism would be an enhancement, though my challenge is based on educational insights. Specifically, the transhuman quest for immortality, in which the old seeks to sustain itself indefinitely, seems to oppose the radical renewal of education described by Arendt and others. There is the basic problem of resources: the old must make space for the new by the renewal of life through death, which perhaps could be solved by extraterrestrial colonization or through digitization and uploading. However, the educational principle that life is constituted by a creative tension between those coming in to the world (the young) and those going out (the old) is a basic condition for life itself. The necessity of education correlates with the necessity of the renewal of the world.

Rather than being regarded as revolutionary or radical, transhumanism is, then, fundamentally and ruinously conservative: it seeks to sustain what is, as it is. Transhumanists sometimes berate those who are hesitant about the scale and scope of technological change as bio-conservative, though maybe the transhuman community itself that is the most conservative of all: it fails to see how the preservation of the old world is an affront to the ongoing renewal that sustains the world.

This renewal is not a case of the new entirely replacing or displacing the old, as a cult of youth might have it. By no means does this jettison tradition and the past. In order for children to arrive in the world, they must, says Arendt, be introduced to it. Herein lies the legitimate but limited authority of educators: that, by showing the world, they are able to take responsibility for it, while letting the forces of renewal remake it. Arendt ends her Crisis in Education essay with the following appeal to love:

Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.

For Arendt, this renewal is not realised in a techno-utopia in which we may exist indefinitely, but a common world in which the old order is in constant transformative renewal. This means convention and tradition provide the ground for representing the world to the young, who then are able to introduce something new through invention and transformation. This balance between old and new, past and future, makes education both necessary and possible.

My concerns are less that transhuman prospects for extended or unending life are real possibilities than what these prospects indicate about contemporary attitudes to human formation and education: namely, the current technologisation of education disregards the interpretive gap which makes education more than a mechanical process of construction. Bringing to view the interpretive gap reminds us that renewal is both possible and essential in order to exceed the conservative forces that seek only to recreate the patterns of the past.

Every parent, educator and transhumanist has an idea of the good and a belief or hope in the possibility of realising it; what might be called a faith in the future. Faith is necessary because of the gap between our intentions to make change, and the outcomes of those intentions. There is a twofold problem: we often dont know whether change is good, and even if we did know this, we often dont know if change can, or has, been realised. It is the human condition to live in this gap, a gap that requires us to live between the conventions and traditions that ground us, and the inventions and transformations that develop us. This gap ensures that, thankfully, the influences of the old on the young are not entirely mechanical or predictable, and that our humanity is staked upon a wager to affirm the world without hanging on to it indefinitely. Because of this gap, it is incumbent upon us to reflect upon the judgements that we must inevitably make, and the possible futures in which we put our faith, hope and love.

Read the original post:
Education and Enhancement in a Transhuman Future - Patheos

A minister has said that future Internet of Things and data regulation will take into account "decisions that we need to be aware we are making" when handing personal data over to tech companies.

Junior tech policy minister Matt Warman told a Westminster Hall debate of MPs last week that the IoT "represents a whole new chapter of how technology is becoming more common in our homes".

The debate occurred on the same day as the incumbent UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, co-signed a letter with the US attorney general and Aussie Home Affairs minister requesting that Facebook "does not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption... without including a means for lawful access to the content of communications..."

One-time Ofcom gros fromage Chi Onwurah MP secured the debate, supposedly as a discussion about IoT regulation. It veered a bit into Labour Party electioneering for a new digital society based on heavy regulation of largely American tech and data-trading companies.

"We need an architecture of standards and a regulatory framework that enables security and interoperability across the internet and also considers the lifeblood of the internet of things data," said Onwurah.

Enthusiastically promoting a heavy-touch view of future UK IoT regulation, she continued: "That libertarian idea that technology is the answer to everything has driven our regulatory approach for too long, so he [Warman] is right to say that we need experts on technology who can stand up for and consider its future applications from the point of view of society and citizens."

Her Labour colleague Jon Cruddas, MP for Barking, reinforced this by dismissing Silicon Valley's confidence "in the potential of technology [which] goes hand in hand with a widespread libertarianism," while bizarrely adding: "What happens when transhumanist thinking informs the technologists?"

Transhumanism discussed in this 2017 Reg lecture here is, as many a reader will know, famously espoused by Kevin "Captain Cyborg" Warwick and Dmitry Kaminskiy of Deep Knowledge Ventures, who once appointed a robot to his company board.

SNP MP Patrick Grady observed, rather shakily, that he wasn't sure if his political party "has an established view on transhumanism" but returned to the topic of the debate to say that the IoT "is already part of some people's daily lives, perhaps without them even realising or with them already taking it for granted."

Liam Byrne, Labour's shadow Minister of Fun*, compared the rise of the IoT to the Industrial Revolution, giving PR flacks the world over a little shiver of delight, and likened the situation now to Adam Smith's linen shirt. Comparing that economic need (a man without one in Smith's day was thought to be poor, simply because everyone else at the time had one) to the progress of tech across the world, Byrne called for a digital "bill of rights" combined with "powerful regulation" to curb "some of the biggest, wealthiest and most powerful companies on earth".

Responding to all this, Warman said: "This is a debate about data, not the internet of things The consumer has to understand that they are giving up their data for a particular purpose and a particular benefit.

"I commend the approach that says we are dealing with issues that go far beyond a debate about technology," continued Warman, "which will have an impact on huge aspects of humanity itself, whether we get them right or wrong."

He then went on to claim that there will be 75 billion IoT devices worldwide by 2025, a figure that is half again as large as the discredited 50-billion-by-2020 figure disowned by Ericsson some years ago.

Whatever the future of IoT and/or data regulation, the government will probably remain tied up in Brexit for years to come.

* Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport

Sponsored: What next after Netezza?

Read more:
Heavy data protection regulation looms in Labour plans for post-Brexit flows and IoT devices - The Register

[ To me, a proper dictionary is a book of spells, Winterson said in her recent By the Book interview. ]

Ry is also falling for a version of Marys creation: Dr. Victor Stein, a TED-talking tech disrupter with a God complex and a keen fashion sense. Thanks to cryonics, in which Ry once dabbled, the grisly horror of reanimating a body is now entirely feasible, but Stein wants to go further into the realms of transhumanism and beyond: The world I imagine, the world A.I. will make possible, will not be a world of labels and that includes binaries like male and female, black and white, rich and poor. It sounds like a utopia, but anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with Westworld, HAL 9000 and Philip K. Dick will know that this is dangerous territory. Ry has serious concerns about these visionary goals, even while empathizing with them: I am part of a small group of transgender medical professionals. Some of us are transhuman enthusiasts too. That isnt surprising; we feel or have felt that were in the wrong body. We can understand the feeling that anybody is the wrong body.

This understanding aside, at times, its difficult to figure out why self-aware Ry falls so hard for Stein (although, admittedly, they have great sex). For someone whose eventual goal is to be free of the meat that makes up the body, he has an initial, almost prurient fascination with Rys choice to identify as hybrid, and is repeatedly at pains to assure Ry hes not gay (another sly nod to the contemporary discourse around gender and sexual identity). Occasionally, he comes across as little more than a TED Talk himself, spouting chunks of research and philosophical meanderings that, while fascinating, stall the novel. Its as if Winterson is at pains to remind us that issues around gender, notions of the self and fears of automatons supplanting human agency are not new concerns theyre as old as Ovids Metamorphoses. But these forays into didacticism are balanced with gleeful, highly imaginative set pieces rich with black humor: Dr. Steins lab lurks, Young Frankenstein-style, in decommissioned tunnels under Manchester, complete with its own pub. Severed, reanimated hands skitter, Addams Family-like, through the bowels of the lab, where Ron has been invited to create a Christian Companion sex doll for the evangelical market.

[ Peek inside Wintersons writing studio. ]

Weaving through all of this is the heart of the novel the primary love story promised on the cover, an uneasy, love-hate relationship between the author and her creation. As the Inventor of Dreams, Mary Shelley looses her novel into the world and mourns the loss of her lover and her children, were invited to consider what happens when a creation outlives and surpasses its creator (Yet, suppose my story has a life of its own?). The original novel has achieved immortality, and Wintersons Mary can never shake off the specter of her creation and the inventions it inspires. In parallel, and against their better judgment, Ry provides Stein with body parts snaffled from the hospital, laying them at his feet like a cat. They include a cryogenically frozen head in a flask that Polly D. hilariously dubs the iHead and that Stein hopes will be his key to the Singularity the moment A.I. changes the way we live, forever. Rys gifts will possibly give birth to another form of immortality the queasy notion of the consciousness living forever, disembodied, in the cloud and who knows where that will lead the human race?

View post:
A Novel That Riffs on Sex Dolls, Mary Shelley and Brexit - The New York Times

And by the time people are in a position to begin colonising other planets, mankind will be a technologically-augmented species, Bob Flint, the technology director with BPs Digital Innovation Organisation, predicted. The recent BBC One drama series Years and Years touched on such concepts, with one character voicing her desire to become transhuman - in other words, dramatically enhanced by technology - and Mr Flint said the concept was perhaps not as far-fetched as it might sound. Mr Flint, who will present his ideas during a talk entitled The Upgradeable Human at the New Scientist Live festival at Londons ExCel centre, said: Humankinds development is a story of using technology to add to our capabilities think clothing and spectacles, or more recently pacemakers and laser eye surgery.

We can imagine augmenting our strength, stamina, senses and even intelligence

Bob Flint

Now, with technology becoming incredibly powerful through digital, the possibilities are becoming exponentially greater. We can imagine augmenting our strength, stamina, senses and even intelligence.

It was yesterday announced that a French man, known has Thiabault, had managed to walk in the exoskeleton in a pioneering experiment carried out by scientists at the University of Grenoble in France.

As a result, the next few decades could see an increasing blurring of the lines between man and machine, Mr Flint said.

He explained: Wearables are an early example of this trend, but new technology is emerging which can be incorporated more seamlessly into the body, heralding an era where humans and machines will be closely integrated.

Eventually, its possible humans may be able to move beyond the evolutionary process by selecting digital upgrades that overcome the constraints of biology and allow each of us to choose powerful new abilities, which can be used in our personal and working lives.

Such concepts have been featured in modern sci-fi shows including Charlie Brookers Black Mirror, and the aforementioned Years and Years, written by Russell T Davies and even as far back as the Six Million Dollar Man in the 1970s.

Mr Flint said: I loved Years and Years, and thought it was great to see TV drama exploring some very futuristic concepts.

Personally, I think were some way from the transhumanism that is mentioned (one of the characters wanted to upload her personality and experiences to become a purely digital being, which would need huge advances in computing).

Im actually talking about the opposite idea, using digital technology to give our human selves greater powers - this is possible now.

READ MORE: Jet suit breakthrough: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Im just predicting it will become easier, cheaper and much less noticeable in the near future.

I think the bigger issue is not so much whether this will be technically possible there are lots of research projects and early products which signpost the direction of travel.

Its more whether upgrading ourselves will be seen as socially acceptable. This is hard to call, but I think that if it gives us an advantage, maybe in work, sport or socially, then eventually it will simply be regarded as a normal thing to do.

There are all sorts of major ethical questions here, some of the ones weve come across are: will human upgrades only be available to the very rich? How will the most deserving get hold of necessary technology even if they dont have the means to pay for it?

DON'T MISSRobots to take on third of unskilled jobs 'in ten years' [SCIENCE]Cyborg robots: Lab-grown biohybrid muscles could MIMIC humans [PICTURES]CYBORGS one step closer as robots created which respond to TOUCH[ANALYSIS]

What does privacy mean in an age where technology can collect lots of personal information on our physical or mental state? How do we hang onto the rights to our own data?

If a company is looking to hire a new member of staff, how should they treat the technically augmented versus the non-augmented applicants? Is the playing field ever going to be level again?

We really need a public conversation on these issues, so we can decide what regulation or legal change we may need in this area.

For example, the Royal Society has recently kicked off a public dialogue on neural interfaces, which is a great start.

Looking further into the future, Mr Flint believed technological enhancements may also help humans conquer space.

He explained: I know theres a big debate about whether its preferable for humans to lead the exploration of other worlds, or robots.

Certainly, robotic methods are going to be easier (and less costly) in the short term, as you dont need to create habitable conditions on board the spacecraft or on the planet you land on.

But eventually, if humankind is going to become an interplanetary species, well need to get good at moving life across vast tracts of space.

I actually dont think that having an upgraded human is mandatory to enable this. But I do think that the timescales will coincide in other words, we will be a technologically-augmented species anyway, by the time we seriously attempt to colonise other worlds.

The Upgradeable Human is on the Humans stage on October 10 between 10.45am and 11.25am.

Visit link:
Man meets machine: 21st century is age of the upgradeable human, says expert - Express.co.uk

Being cancelled getting you down? Well now theres a conference for youand everyone else booted from mainstream political discourse for thoughtcrimes.

Imagine a conference for people banned from other conferences, the announcement for Founders Funds exclusive new three-day event reads. Imagine a safe space for people who dont feel safe in safe spaces.

Imagine indeed.

Hereticon (yes, its actually called that) promises to include many of our cultures most important troublemakers, specifically ones committed to improving civilization. That might rule out a few names, but wed expect Founders Fund to highlight at least a handful of thinkers from its portfolio companies.

Palantir will probably show up, given recent protests and the decision by both the Grace Hopper Celebration and the Lesbians Who Tech conference to remove the company, which contracts with ICE, as a sponsor.

Retiring Texas Rep. Will Hurd also seems like a natural choice, after being disinvited to keynote the Black Hat security conference due to his political record on abortion. Hurd is also friendly with Founders Fund portfolio company Anduril.

Unlike gatherings of right-leaning online provocateurs that the event resembles, Hereticon will draw a more pedigreed set. The invite-only conference in May 2020 will likely attract attendees from the much-grumbled about liberal strongholds of American tech, and perhaps others whove been cast out of the silicon gates already.

From Galileo to Jesus Christ, heretical thinkers have been met with hostility, even death, and vindicated by posterity, the blog post grandly opens, going on to declare that troublemakers are essential to mankinds progress, and so we must protect them.

The topics that will take center stage at Hereticon? Theyre a doozy. Conversations will center on a smorgasbord of libertarian micro-obsessions, including transhumanism, the abolition of college (a favorite of Founders Fund partner Peter Thiel), the benefits of starvation a la Jack Dorseys fasting diet, the softer side of doomsday prepping, and immortality, naturally.

While its no surprise to see such an event emerge from the crowd that sees eye-to-eye with a man seen as Silicon Valleys seastead-loving deep-pocketed free press assassin, its interesting to see Founders Fund throw the event themselves. Some of the firms investments, like defense-friendly Palantir and Anduril, are considered controversial in techs left-leaning circles, but many of its portfolio companies are more quotidian utilities like Stripe, Facebook, and Credit Karma. Not exactly heretical.

Its likely a strategic choice for a venture firm that could benefit from drawing the self-identified misfits stalking tech's fringes in toward the center and giving them something to feel collectively persecuted and intellectually invigorated about.

Then again, they might just come together to chatter about UFOs and wax poetic about corporate counterculture. Either way, well be staying tuned to see which technocrats and/or heretics get the invite nod.

See the original post:
Hereticon, From Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Is a 'Conference for People Banned From Other Conferences' - The Daily Beast