Download or read book Personality Capture and Emulation written by William Sims Bainbridge and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personality Capture and Emulation is the gateway to an amazing future that actually may be achieved, enabling the preservation and simulation of human personalities at progressively higher levels of fidelity. This challenge is no longer the province merely of uninhibited visionaries, but has become a solid field of research, drawing upon a wide range of information technologies in human-centered computing and cyber-human systems. Even at modest levels of accomplishment, research in this emerging area requires convergence of cognitive, social, and cultural sciences, in cooperation with information engineering and artificial intelligence, thus stimulating new multidisciplinary perspectives. Therefore this book will inspire many specific research and development projects that will produce their own valuable outcomes, even as the totality of the work moves us closer to a major revolution in human life. Will it ever really be possible to transfer a human personality at death to a technology that permits continued life? Or will people come to see themselves as elements in a larger socio-cultural system, for which a societal information system can provide collective immortality even after the demise of individuals? A large number and variety of pilot studies and programming projects are offered as prototypes for research that innovators in many fields may exploit for the achievement of their own goals. Together, they provide an empirical basis to strengthen the intellectual quality of several current debates at the frontiers of the human and information sciences.
Download or read book Family History Digital Libraries written by William Sims Bainbridge and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the modern era, every family and local community can cultivate its own history, endowing living people with meanings inherited from the people of the past, by means of today’s computer-based information and communication technologies. A new profession is emerging, family historians, serving the wider public by assisting in collection and analysis of fascinating data, by teaching talented amateur historians, and by producing complete narratives. Essential are the skills and technologies required to preserve and connect photos, movies, videos, diaries, memoirs, correspondence, artefacts and even architecture such as homes. Online genealogical services are well established sources of official government records, but usually not for recent decades, and not covering the valuable records of legal, medical, and religious organizations. Information can be shared and interpreted by family members through oral history interviews, social media, and online private archives such as wikis and shared file depositories. This book explores a wide variety of online information sources and achieves coherence by documenting and interpreting the history of a particular extended American family on the basis of 9 decades of movies and videos, 17 decades of photographs, and centuries of documents. Starting now, any family may begin to preserve their current experiences for the historians of the future, but this will require social as well as technical innovations. This book is the essential resource, providing the fundamental principles, effective methods, and fascinating questions required to make our past live again.
Download or read book Revival written by William Sims Bainbridge and published by Feral House. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is seeking to destroy all esoteric religious movements, starting with The Process Church of the Final Judgement? The Process was the most fascinating innovative cult of the 1960s, then vanished for four decades before being virtually reborn by the use of information technology. Revival seems to be fiction, yet it’s based on fact and explores the implications of the internet, and the disintegration of conventional faiths. As reported in the author’s anthropological study, Satan’s Power, the Process was polytheistic, asserting the union of Jehovah with Lucifer, and the unity of Christ with Satan. Each Process member was a fragment of a god, with a corresponding personality trait: Jehovah = Discipline, Lucifer = Liberation, Christ = Unification, Satan = Separation. Before the first page of this book, the computer magician who resurrected the Process Church was murdered. Was this man Christ? Christianity may be the opposite of what it seems, a Satanic plot that subconsciously preaches, “Release the fiend that lies dormant within you, for he is strong and ruthless, and his power is far beyond the bounds of human frailty. Come forth in your savage might, rampant with the lust of battle, tense and quivering with the urge to strike, to smash, to split asunder all that seek to detain you.” Can the surviving Processeans achieve the hopes expressed in their blessing: “May the life-giving water of the Lord Christ and the purifying fire of the Lord Satan bring the presence of love and unity into this assembly”?
Download or read book Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business written by Marcus Carter and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EVE Online is a socially complex, science-fiction-themed universe simulation and massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) first released in 2003. Notorious for its colossal battles and ruthless player culture, it has hundreds of thousands of players today. In this fascinating book, scholars, players, and EVE’s developer (CCP Games) examine the intricate world of EVEOnline--providing authentic accounts of lived experience within a game with more than a decade of history and millions of “real” dollars behind it. Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business features contributions from outstanding EVE Online players, such as The Mittani, an infamous member of the game’s community, as well as academics from around the globe. They cover a wide range of subjects: the game’s technicalities and its difficulty; its projection of humanity’s future in space; the configuration of its unique, single-server game world; the global nature of warfare in its “nullsec” territory (and how EVE players have formed a global concept of time); stereotypes of Russian players; espionage play; in-game memorials to Vile Rat (aka U.S. State Department official Sean Smith, murdered in the 2012 Benghazi attack); its gendered playing experience; and CCP Games’ relationship with players; and its history and legacy. Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business is a must for EVE Online players interested in a broad perspective on their all-consuming game. It is also accessible to scholars, game designers seeking to understand and replicate the successful aspects unique to EVE Online, and even those who have never played this notoriously complex game. Contributors: William Sims Bainbridge, National Science Foundation; Chribba; Jedrzej Czarnota; Kjartan Pierre Emilsson; Dan Erdman; Rebecca Fraimow; Martin R. Gibbs, U of Melbourne; Catherine Goodfellow; Kathryn Gronsbell; Keith Harrison; Kristin MacDonough; Mantou (Zhang Yuzhou); Oskar Milik; The Mittani (Alexander Gianturco); Joji Mori; Richard Page; Christopher Paul, Seattle U; Erica Titkemeyer, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Nick Webber, Birmingham City U.
Download or read book Civilizations Beyond Earth written by Douglas A. Vakoch and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astronomers around the world are pointing their telescopes toward the heavens, searching for signs of intelligent life. If they make contact with an advanced alien civilization, how will humankind respond? In thinking about first contact, the contributors to this volume present new empirical and theoretical research on the societal dimensions of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Archaeologists and astronomers explore the likelihood that extraterrestrial intelligence exists, using scientific insights to estimate such elusive factors as the longevity of technological societies. Sociologists present the latest findings of novel surveys, tapping into the public’s attitudes about life beyond Earth to show how religion and education influence beliefs about extraterrestrials. Scholars from such diverse disciplines as mathematics, chemistry, journalism, and religious studies offer innovative solutions for bridging the cultural gap between human and extraterrestrial civilizations, while recognizing the tremendous challenges of communicating at interstellar distances. At a time when new planets are being discovered around other stars at an unprecedented rate, this collection provides a much needed guide to the human impact of discovering we are not alone in the universe.
Download or read book Dynamic Secularization written by William Sims Bainbridge and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses secularization, arguing that it may be more complex and significant than is generally recognized. Using a number of online exploration methods, the author provides insights into how religion may be changing, and how information technology might be energized in this process. Working from the premise that the relationship between science and religion is complex, the author demonstrates that while science has contradicted some specific religious beliefs, science itself may have been facilitated by beliefs formed many centuries ago. Science assists engineers in the development of powerful new technologies, and asserts that the universe is based on a set of fundamental principles that can be understood by humans through the assistance of mathematics. The challenging ideas discussed will benefit readers through sharing a variety of Internet-based research methods and cultural discoveries. The book provides a balance between quantitative methods, illustrated by 24 tables of statistics, and qualitative methods, illustrated by 30 screenshots of computer-generated virtual worlds. Analysis interweaves with description, creating a sense of involvement in the experience of exploring online realities at the same time as radical insights are shared.
Download or read book Fiction Invention and Hyper reality written by Carole M. Cusack and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twentieth century was a period of rapid change for religion. Secularisation resulted in a dramatic fall in church attendance in the West, and the 1950s and 1960s saw the introduction of new religions including the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), the Church of Scientology, and the Children of God. New religions were regarded with suspicion by society in general and Religious Studies scholars alike until the 1990s, when the emergence of a second generation of 'new new' religions – based on popular cultural forms including films, novels, computer games and comic books – and highly individualistic spiritualities confirmed the utter transformation of the religio-spiritual landscape. Indeed, Scientology and ISKCON appeared almost traditional and conservative when compared to the radically de-institutionalised, eclectic, parodic, fun-loving and experimental fiction-based, invented and hyper-real religions. In this book, scholarly treatments of cutting-edge religious and spiritual trends are brought into conversation with contributions by representatives of Dudeism, the Church of All Worlds, the Temple of the Jedi Order and Tolkien spirituality groups. This book will simultaneously entertain, shock, challenge and delight scholars of religious studies, as well as those with a wider interest in new religious movements.
Download or read book Psychology of the Digital Age written by John R. Suler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on years of online research, this book presents key principles of life and wellbeing in the digital realm.
Download or read book Virtual Local Manufacturing Communities written by William Sims Bainbridge and published by Business Expert Press. This book was released on 2019-02-25 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deeply explores production-capable social media channels, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. Distributed manufacturing offers the promise of bringing jobs back to local communities, producing goods that are personalized or harmonize with distinctive cultures, and thereby reversing significant aspects of the globalization that has dominated in recent years. Large corporations may still have important roles to play, but in collaboration with local workshops, providing machinery, software, databases of designs, and communication media suitable for a diverse and dynamic workforce. For years, a set of computer simulation laboratories has flourished, in which millions of people have used virtual machines to produce a great variety of products: massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Their systems are highly diverse, complex, and provide information capable of serious social science analysis. This book deeply explores 30 of these production-capable social media, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. This book begins with an overview of this universe of online virtual worlds then demonstrates the principles of virtual manufacturing, modes of work-related communication, socio-economic structures and dynamics, and the function of artificial intelligence in these human-technology systems. It concludes with consideration of the large-scale technical and cultural variation illustrated both by individual examples and by the rather large industry in which they have long been successful.
Download or read book Virtual Sociocultural Convergence written by William Sims Bainbridge and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-06 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the remarkable sociocultural convergence in multiplayer online games and other virtual worlds, through the unification of computer science, social science, and the humanities. The emergence of online media provides not only new methods for collecting social science data, but also contexts for developing theory and conducting education in the arts as well as technology. Notably, role-playing games and virtual worlds naturally demonstrate many classical concepts about human behaviour, in ways that encourage innovative thinking. The inspiration derives from the internationally shared values developed in a fifteen-year series of conferences on science and technology convergence. The primary methodology is focused on sending avatars, representing classical social theorists or schools of thought, into online gameworlds that harmonize with, or challenge, their fundamental ideas, including technological determinism, urban sociology, group formation, freedom versus control, class stratification, linguistic variation, functional equivalence across cultures, behavioural psychology, civilization collapse, and ethnic pluralism. Researchers and students in the social and behavioural sciences will benefit from the many diverse examples of how both qualitative and quantitative science of culture and society can be performed in online communities of many kinds, even as artists and gamers learn styles and skills they may apply in their own work and play.
Download or read book Postmortal Society written by Michael Hviid Jacobsen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history mankind has struggled to reconcile itself with the inescapability of its own mortality. This book explores the themes of immortality and survivalism in contemporary culture, shedding light on the varied and ingenious ways in which humans and human societies aspire to confront and deal with death, or even seek to outlive it, as it were. Bringing together theoretical and empirical work from internationally acclaimed scholars across a range of disciplines, Postmortal Society offers studies of the strategies adopted and means available in modern society for trying to ‘cheat’ death or prolong life, the status of the dead in the modern Western world, the effects of beliefs that address the terror of death in other areas of life, the ‘immortalisation’ of celebrities, the veneration of the dead in virtual worlds, symbolic immortality through work, the implications of understanding ‘immortality’ in chemical-neuronal terms, and the apparent paradox of our greater reverence for the dead in increasingly secular, capitalist societies. A fascinating collection of studies that explore humanity’s attempts to deal with its own mortality in the modern age, this book will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers and scholars of cultural studies with interests in death and dying.
Download or read book Digital Death written by Christopher M. Moreman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating work explores the meaning of death in the digital age, showing readers the new ways digital technology allows humans to approach, prepare for, and handle their ultimate destiny. With DeadSocialTM one can create messages to be published to social networks after death. Facebook's "If I Die" enables users to create a video or text message for posthumous publication. Twitter _LIVESON accounts will keep tweeting even after the user is gone. There is no doubt that the digital age has radically changed options related to death, dying, grieving, and remembering, allowing people to say goodbye in their own time and their own unique way. Drawing from a range of academic perspectives, this book is the only serious study to focus on the ways in which death, dying, and memorialization appear in and are influenced by digital technology. The work investigates phenomena, devices, and audiences as they affect mortality, remembrances, grieving, posthumous existence, and afterlife experience. It examines the markets to which the providers of such services are responding, and it analyzes the degree to which digital media is changing views and expectations related to death. Ultimately, the contributors seek to answer an even more important question: how digital existences affect both real-world perceptions of life's end and the way in which lives are actually lived.
Download or read book Virtually Human written by Martine Aliana Rothblatt and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtually Human explores what the not-too-distant future will look like when cyberconsciousness—simulation of the human brain via software and computer technology—becomes part of our daily lives. Meet Bina48, the world's most sentient robot, commissioned by Martine Rothblatt and created by Hanson Robotics. Bina48 is a nascent Mindclone of Martine's wife that can engage in conversation, answer questions, and even have spontaneous thoughts that are derived from multimedia data in a Mindfile created by the real Bina. If you're active on Twitter or Facebook, share photos through Instagram, or blogging regularly, you're already on your way to creating a Mindfile—a digital database of your thoughts, memories, feelings, and opinions that is essentially a back-up copy of your mind. Soon, this Mindfile can be made conscious with special software—Mindware—that mimics the way human brains organize information, create emotions and achieve self-awareness. This may sound like science-fiction A.I. (artificial intelligence), but the nascent technology already exists. Thousands of software engineers across the globe are working to create cyberconsciousness based on human consciousness and the Obama administration recently announced plans to invest in a decade-long Brain Activity Map project. Virtually Human is the only book to examine the ethical issues relating to cyberconsciousness and Rothblatt, with a Ph.D. in medical ethics, is uniquely qualified to lead the dialogue.
Download or read book Computer Simulations of Space Societies written by William Sims Bainbridge and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the intersection of astronautics, computer science, and social science, this book introduces the challenges and insights associated with computer simulation of human society in outer space, and of the dynamics of terrestrial enthusiasm for space exploration. Never before have so many dynamic representations of space-related social systems existed, some deeply analyzing the logical implications of social-scientific theories, and others open for experience by the general public as computer-generated virtual worlds. Fascinating software ranges from multi-agent artificial intelligence models of civilization, to space-oriented massively multiplayer online games, to educational programs suitable for schools or even for the world's space exploration agencies. At the present time, when actual forays by humans into space are scarce, computer simulations of space societies are an excellent way to prepare for a renaissance of exploration beyond the bounds of Earth.
Download or read book Handbook on 3D3C Platforms written by Yesha Sivan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-11-04 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents 3D3C platforms – three-dimensional systems for community, creation and commerce. It discusses tools including bots in social networks, team creativity, privacy, and virtual currencies & micropayments as well as their applications in areas like healthcare, energy, collaboration, and art. More than 20 authors from 10 countries share their experiences, research fi ndings and perspectives, off ering a comprehensive resource on the emerging fi eld of 3D3C worlds. The book is designed for both the novice and the expert as a way to unleash the emerging opportunities in 3D3C worlds. This Handbook maps with breadth and insight the exciting frontier of building virtual worlds with digital technologies. David Perkins, Research Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education This book is from one of the most adventurous and energetic persons I have ever met. Yesha takes us into new undiscovered spaces and provides insight into phenomena of social interaction and immersive experiences that transform our lives. Cees de Bont, Dean of School of Design & Chair Professor of Design, School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University When you read 3D3C Platforms you realize what a domain like ours -- 3D printing -- can and should do for the world. Clearly we are just starting. Inspiring. David Reis, CEO, Stratasys Ltd This book provides a stunning overview regarding how virtual worlds are reshaping possibilities for identity and community. Th e range of topics addressed by the authors— from privacy and taxation to fashion and health care—provide a powerful roadmap for addressing the emerging potential of these online environments. Tom Boellstorff , Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine Handbook on 3D3C Platforms amassed a unique collection of multidisciplinary academic thinking. A primer on innovations that will touch every aspect of the human community in the 21st century. Eli Talmor, Professor, London Business School
Download or read book The Meaning and Value of Spaceflight written by William Sims Bainbridge and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the most serious and comprehensive study, by far, of American public perceptions about the meaning of space exploration, analyzing vast troves of questionnaire data collected by many researchers and polling firms over a span of six decades and anchored in influential social science theories. It doesn't simply report the percentages who held various opinions, but employs sophisticated statistical techniques to answer profound questions and achieve fresh discoveries. Both the Bush and the Obama administrations have cut back severely on fundamental research in space science and engineering. Understanding better what space exploration means for citizens can contribute to charting a feasible but progressive course. Since the end of the Space Race between the US and the USSR, social scientists have almost completely ignored space exploration as a topic for serious analysis and this book seeks to revive that kind of contribution. The author communicates the insights in a lucid style, not only intelligible but interesting to readers from a variety of backgrounds.
Download or read book Tales of the Turing Church Hacking religion enlightening science awakening technology written by Giulio Prisco and published by Giulio Prisco. This book was released on 2020-02-07 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores intersections of science and religion, spirituality and technology, engineering and science fiction, mind and matter, and outlines a new cosmic, transhumanist religion. Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology.
