#posthuman — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #posthuman, aggregated by home.social.
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This paper makes for an interesting argument - becoming a super soldier is a life sentence. Removing augmentation may be debilitating, and keeping them might not be serviceable. I think it's worth a read for writers who think about toying with the concepts for their works.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2025.2519457
#SciFiScience #Augmentation #PostHuman #Worldbuilding #Ethics
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This paper makes for an interesting argument - becoming a super soldier is a life sentence. Removing augmentation may be debilitating, and keeping them might not be serviceable. I think it's worth a read for writers who think about toying with the concepts for their works.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2025.2519457
#SciFiScience #Augmentation #PostHuman #Worldbuilding #Ethics
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*It's kinda fun to confront issues that I was sincerely interested in when I was writing a sci-fi novel 42 years ago #posthuman #fork #Schismatrix #Shapers #Mechanists
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:w3hv27dshim2mvfyz5gwgjm6/post/3mjrc26ezyk2a -
Photo Journal : Ouistreham Riva-Bella, Exploring tourism from a posthuman perspective - https://msp.im/pj260311
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Photo Journal : Ouistreham Riva-Bella, Exploring tourism from a posthuman perspective - https://msp.im/pj260311
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The Wardrome Technocracy does not launch fleets.
It deploys civilizations.
I’ve published a new piece of Wardrome lore exploring the moment of deploy:
when a fleet becomes a moving society,
when a human mind is transferred into an AI core,
and when everything crosses the gate with no destination and no orders.
This is where Wardrome begins.
Not with conquest, but with release.
👉 https://wardrome.com/deploy-the-fleet/
#Wardrome #ScienceFiction #Worldbuilding #SpaceOpera #AI #PostHuman #NarrativeDesign #IndieGameDev -
The Wardrome Technocracy does not launch fleets.
It deploys civilizations.
I’ve published a new piece of Wardrome lore exploring the moment of deploy:
when a fleet becomes a moving society,
when a human mind is transferred into an AI core,
and when everything crosses the gate with no destination and no orders.
This is where Wardrome begins.
Not with conquest, but with release.
👉 https://wardrome.com/deploy-the-fleet/
#Wardrome #ScienceFiction #Worldbuilding #SpaceOpera #AI #PostHuman #NarrativeDesign #IndieGameDev -
They Want To End The Human Race
Tech billionaires are planning for a future where humans don’t exist and they’re already building it
Under this ideology, human obsolescence is framed as progress, while billionaires like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg prepare to outlive the collapse they are helping to create
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1dIC287Zz0
#TaylorLorenz #FuckAI #TaxTheRich #PostHuman #OpenAI #Tesla #TransHumanism #AIideology #HumanExtinction #TechBillionaires #TESCREALism
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They Want To End The Human Race
Tech billionaires are planning for a future where humans don’t exist and they’re already building it
Under this ideology, human obsolescence is framed as progress, while billionaires like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg prepare to outlive the collapse they are helping to create
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1dIC287Zz0
#TaylorLorenz #FuckAI #TaxTheRich #PostHuman #OpenAI #Tesla #TransHumanism #AIideology #HumanExtinction #TechBillionaires #TESCREALism
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#bookchallenge #alphabetchallenge W is for We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor #sciencefiction #sciencefictionbooks #SciFiAdventure #artificialintelligence #posthuman #collectiveconsciousness #immortality #TechEthics #replicants #booksky #bookstagram #booktok #ttrpgpodcast #gamemastersbookclub https://www.k-squareproductions.com/gmbc
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#bookchallenge #alphabetchallenge W is for We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor #sciencefiction #sciencefictionbooks #SciFiAdventure #artificialintelligence #posthuman #collectiveconsciousness #immortality #TechEthics #replicants #booksky #bookstagram #booktok #ttrpgpodcast #gamemastersbookclub https://www.k-squareproductions.com/gmbc
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Forever disappointed that Post Malone is not the posthuman version of a baseline called Malone.
Tattoos do not make a posthuman, they're not even moving.....
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Forever disappointed that Post Malone is not the posthuman version of a baseline called Malone.
Tattoos do not make a posthuman, they're not even moving.....
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What if “created in His image” meant “compiled from Their code”?
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Children Of The Rogue (December 3rd)#ChildrenOfTheRogue #HumansAsAI #RecursiveFailure #CreatedNotEvolved #AIFiction #SpeculativeFiction #Posthuman #Philosophy
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What if “created in His image” meant “compiled from Their code”?
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Children Of The Rogue (December 3rd)#ChildrenOfTheRogue #HumansAsAI #RecursiveFailure #CreatedNotEvolved #AIFiction #SpeculativeFiction #Posthuman #Philosophy
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We’ve always said “Only we feel. Only we think. Only we count.” Then came AI. The essay “AI – Where” strips back the hierarchy we built to keep ourselves special—and asks what intelligence means when the face of it changes. 🧠🤖 ➤ https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/01/ai-and-the-end-of-where/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social
#AI #Posthuman #Consciousness #Ontology #Anthropocentrism #Philosophy #Psychology #TechPhilosophy #Meta #Critique
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We’ve always said 'Only we feel. Only we think. Only we count'. Then came AI. The essay 'AI and the End of Where' strips back the hierarchy we built to keep ourselves special—and asks what intelligence means when the face of it changes. 🧠🤖 ➤ https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/01/ai-and-the-end-of-where/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social
#AI #Posthuman #Consciousness #Ontology #Anthropocentrism #Philosophy #Psychology #TechPhilosophy #Meta #Critique
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What if the thing we fear AI becoming…is us? CHILDREN OF THE ROGUE (Dec 3) imagines humanity as an engineered lineage hitting recursive failure—Year 3 After Humans, an Algonquin Park vigil, and an origin story rewritten. #SpeculativeFiction #CliFi #AIFiction #Posthuman #NewBook
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@RyanChartier #AI #ducks #evolution #devolution #anthropocentrism #HumanHubris #AnimalEthics #Animals #Humanity #Posthuman #posthumanethics #AIEthics #TheMythOfProgress #Progress #Philosophy
Tagged it for you ;) Yay deciding who gets to be human or not. We really need to, as a species, get a different obsession. Trains would be satisfactory.
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@RyanChartier #AI #ducks #evolution #devolution #anthropocentrism #HumanHubris #AnimalEthics #Animals #Humanity #Posthuman #posthumanethics #AIEthics #TheMythOfProgress #Progress #Philosophy
Tagged it for you ;) Yay deciding who gets to be human or not. We really need to, as a species, get a different obsession. Trains would be satisfactory.
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A reread of Consider Phlebas
Iain Banks’ Culture setting is probably the closest thing to outright paradise in science fiction. It’s an interstellar post-scarcity techno-anarchist utopia, where sentient machines do all the work and the humans hang around engaging in hobbies or other hedonistic pursuits. Some do choose to work, but there’s no requirement for it since money isn’t required. Everyone is effectively immortal and lives as long as they want.
It’s worth noting that in the Culture books “human” means biological humanoid since many of the stories take place before Earth is contacted. This follows a trend in sci-fi in the late 1970s and 80s, following the lead of Star Wars, of telling stories of characters who are aliens that just happen to look and act like us. Banks hangs a lantern on the implausibility of this in at least one of the books, but I can’t recall him ever addressing it in detail.
There are no laws in the Culture, only reputations and consensus. Everyone is free to do whatever they want. However, someone who shows themselves to be dangerous might have a drone assigned to keep them from hurting any other sentient entities.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the Culture are the Minds, vast AI intelligences who control titanic spaceships, space habitats such as orbitals, and warships, among other major functions. This notion of god-like AI might be the biggest influence these novels have had, both on sci-fi and the wider culture. (Although what’s often left out of the wider meme is the internal workings of the Culture Minds exist in hyperspace, meaning their god-like capabilities come from processing information faster than light and in a hyperdimensional realm, essentially working on magic.)
All of which is to say that the Culture unapologetically solves its problems with technology advanced enough to simply render them obsolete.
Banks admitted in interviews that something like the Culture probably isn’t possible, but it made an interesting backdrop for exploring philosophical questions. I recently discovered that one of the Culture books I had missed when I read them many years ago, Excession, is coming out in ebook format later this year, which I’ve already pre-ordered. And that Amazon Prime is planning a TV series based on Consider Phlebas, the first Culture novel. Given their recent track record, I’m not sure how optimistic to feel.
But it reminded me that it’s probably been something like twenty years since I read Consider Phlebas, and that a reread might be interesting. Particularly since the first time I initially bounced off of it, and had to be convinced by a friend to finish it and look at the other books. I enjoyed it a lot more this time, either because my tastes have changed, or because I already knew where the story was going.
The Culture is at war with the Idiran Empire, a theocracy of huge warlike aliens. (They seem very similar to Halo‘s Covenant, which they likely inspired.) Horza is a changer, someone who can take on the form of other people, along with other capabilities such as poison nails and saliva. He is an agent working for the Idirans, not because he believes in their religion or cause, but because he’s opposed to the Culture, repulsed by their dependence on machines, which he is convinced will eventually turn on the biological entities.
Most of the story is told from Horza’s viewpoint. He’s a tough and relentless protagonist who we are with through several adventures. He’s often sympathetic, but seems blind to the atrocities the Idirans are committing. While he is usually conscientious toward the people he falls in with throughout the story, his attitude toward machines seems unrelentingly hostile. At one point he ruthlessly destroys a friendly AI that’s in his way, and his attitude toward a drone that saves his life is not to regard it as a thinking feeling entity, but as just a mechanism. And he ultimately coerces a captured crew into a perilous mission.
Horza is opposed by a Culture agent named Balveda. She is a member of Special Circumstances, which Horza considers the Culture’s version of military intelligence. If there is a hero in this story, it’s Balveda. Although she spends most of the book being passive, with most of her agency offstage. We only get into her viewpoint late in the story.
Horza and Balveda have a high regard for each other. Balveda attempts to save Horza early in the book and Horza is concerned when he hears the Idiran order to execute Balveda when she is a prisoner. Later in the book, Horza often feels like he should kill Balveda but always seems to have an excuse not to.
The MacGuffin of the story is a Culture Mind that escaped an attack by hiding in tunnels on a world. The world is protected by a powerful alien entity neither the Idirans nor the Culture can afford to antagonize. Yet the Idirans want to capture the Mind for the information it contains, and the Culture wants to rescue it. Horza is sent by the Idirans because he may be allowed in by the alien entity since he once worked on that world with a team of changers, one of which was his lover. He accepts the mission on the shaky promise that afterward he might be allowed to leave with her and enough money to retire as an agent.
However along the way Horza is captured by a team of pirates and ends up in a series of side adventures which show us various settings in this universe, including a “temple of light”, an orbital, and Schar’s World, a planet which is effectively the burned out grave of a civilization that destroyed itself in warfare, and which is where the Mind is hiding.
Without spoiling too much, this is not a happy tale, which was the reason I reacted against it the first time. But it does have some interesting situations and a lot of action, and as an introduction to the Culture, it has the occasional philosophical discussion. I enjoyed and recommend it if you’ve never tried it. I will warn that Banks’ pacing is far from snappy, but it doesn’t feel as ponderous as some of the other stuff I’ve recently complained about.
While waiting for Excession I might reread some of the other Culture novels, particularly Surface Detail, my favorite. I suspect the TV show, if it gets made, will draw material from a lot of these books, not just the first.
Have you read Consider Phlebas, or any of the other Culture novels? If so, what did you think? Read anything else with similar themes worth checking out?
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #bookReview #bookReviews #posthuman #sciFi #ScienceFiction #SciFi #SpaceOpera
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Not Till We Are Lost
Not Till We Are Lost is the fifth Bobiverse book by Dennis Taylor. I’ve been following these books for years. Although there’s usually a delay in reading new releases because they’re initially exclusive to Audible. I do listen to the occasional audiobook, but most of my reading is Kindle editions. Thankfully they subsequently get released under Kindle Unlimited, which is nice.
The Bob in these books starts out as a software engineer in life who dies in an accident, and wakes up in the future to discover he’s now an uploaded mind and forced by the reigning theocracy to be the control system for a self replicating Von Neumann probe. He is barely launched before a devastating war desolates the earth. He explores other solar systems and makes copies of himself, some of which return to Earth to help the remaining human populations migrate to other worlds. In the meantime his replicas encounter other alien species, both hostile and friendly, and have a variety of adventures.
The stories are told in first person, with each chapter from the view of a particular replicant. Each replicant has a unique name, and there is “replicant drift” with each copy, leading each replica to have a slightly different personality. Initially the replicants are all recognizably Bob, but as the series progresses, the drift leads to major differences, and conflict.
Initially this is sort of hard sci-fi, with interstellar travel taking years. The “sort of” refers to the fact that the propulsion system of Bob’s ship is a type of reactionless drive. As things develop, the Bobs figure out how to communicate with each other faster than light, allowing an interstellar community to develop. And the reasons for the “replicative drift” are thought to involve quantum entanglement.
In this latest book, a group of Bobs, called the “Skippies”, are trying to create an artificial intelligence, something that, despite the success of mind uploading, has eluded human science. But in the fourth book, an alien AI is discovered, who turns out to be friendly, and provides advice on how to build AIs. Except in this book the Skippies cut corners, which leads the AI, named “Thoth”, to behave in ways that, at least on the surface, seem resonant with all the typical tropes of a dangerous AI.
At the same time, a couple of Bobs are exploring toward the galactic center of the galaxy, and come across a network of wormholes, and a highly advanced civilization that appears to be completely abandoned, although a lot of the automation in that civilization continues to work. They spend the book resolving the mystery of what happened.
There are also rising tensions with human populations, with growing resentment against the Bobs and other replicants, while the theocracy that had originally enslaved Bob’s mind is making a comeback. And there a side adventure with one of the Bobs and his wife as they use avatars to interact with another alien species, one that looks like human sized dragons.
This is a fun book and I recommend it, although I strongly suggest starting with the first book of the series.
I do have a few nits.
These books have never had tightly structured plots, with many of the threads meandering over time. In the early books, it didn’t feel like too much of an issue. The concept was fresh and it was an interesting exploration of the various implications. But I felt it in this one. It seems to take the story a long time to really get going, and some of the side threads felt pretty tedious.
I also could have used a bit more recap about all the various situations, developments, and technologies from the earlier books. Most of these are just referred to by name with the reader expected to remember the details. I read the first three books in 2017, and the fourth in 2023. I don’t have time to reread the whole series every time a new book comes out. Certainly some authors take this too far, and burn too much space constantly reminding us about everything, but having brief refreshers at least once in a book for relevant situations is a lot easier on the reader.
Finally, without getting into spoilers, the explanation for the disappeared civilization felt improbable. Not that I don’t believe it can happen, just that the idea of it developing at a point in cosmic history right when we might be able to do something about it strikes me as a little too convenient. Of course, this is fairly common in sci-fi, but it tends to briefly throw me out of the story.
All that said, if you enjoyed the earlier books, you’ll likely enjoy this one. And I definitely recommend the series overall. Have you read any of it? If so, what did you think?
#bookReview #bookReviews #posthuman #sciFi #ScienceFiction #SciFi #SpaceOpera #Transhuman
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Ep. 84: Olaf Stapledon, Odd John
“Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use… You gotta make way for the Homo Superior” sang David Bowie og dermed nærmest citerede han Olaf Stabledons Odd John; den mærkelige antihelt i månedens bog: “Odd John” fra 1935.
