This story originally appeared on my Medium profile: https://medium.com/predict/transhumanism-can-be-the-ultimate-egalitarianism-or-the-ultimate-elitism-5bab54661a06 There is something to fit every person, personality, and philosophy. But, who gets access and who doesn’t? The term transhuman can seem quite ambiguous. And, in some sense, it is. It encompasses a wide range of human augmentations and enhancements: From mind-uploading into an android, digital immortality in the cloud, gene-editing to protect against disease and stop aging, augmentation to enhance performance in every sense of the word, cryonic suspension after death, all the way to simply replacing failing physiological systems, and literally everything in between or beyond. There is no known limit to what can potentially be done to evolve humans beyond the current biological limitations. Because of the limitless possibilities, it is important that we begin talking about what this means for humanity and the future of governance. There are many organizations who recognize the need for taking steps now to ensure people have the autonomy to decide if they want augmentations or not. Or, to decide how to take care of their future as these technologies become more common. One of these organizations is the United States Transhumanist Party. It was formed in 2014 by Zoltan Istvan when he ran for President during the 2016 elections. His vision was to bring the discussion about the future of human augmentation to the mainstream and dispell many of the fears that surround it. An organization of dedicated members (of which, I am one) is working hard to achieve this goal. Since its founding, it has grown into a worldwide movement for those who recognize that the technology we once believed was only science fiction is now on the brink of becoming reality. Our old ways of governing society are no longer good enough. There must be a change in the thought process. Change? But, Why? You may question why we should overhaul the political framework that has seemingly served us so well in the past. The answer to that is fairly straightforward: This is unlike any other time in human history. We have had many political systems throughout human history, and they always evolve. The idea of keeping things as they are now won’t work in an age where technological innovation is going to profoundly change humanity more than ever before. We could compare it to the industrial revolution, but I contend that this comparison is severely lacking in grasping the entirety of the situation. There are some people who advocate for putting a sentient AI in place of a president and some who argue the opposite. Some argue that once we break the barrier to reversing/slowing down/stopping aging, term limits will need to be imposed on certain governmental positions that currently have none. Imagine an immortal as a SCOTUS. What ramifications could this have? Governance AND Economy are On-The-Table I cannot stress hard enough how close we are to bringing about a technological age that seems highly far-fetched to those who are outside of the sphere of techno-optimism. We only see a small portion of it right now, but it increasingly becoming part of our daily lives? Automation. With every small step — such as autonomous vehicles, and stores where you don’t even scan your items, you just pick them up and walk out of the store — we exponentially increase the power of these technologies to drastically change our future. And, it’s not just robots that put the monetary system as we know it at risk of collapse. What happens when Neuralink and similar tech becomes more widely available, and you are forced to compete with someone who now has augmented cognitive faculties? Do you believe they deserve to earn more money because they provide a greater service? If they can do the jobs of 3 people, where does that leave you? Would you augment yourself to compete? Do you believe you have a right to be able to compete if you so desire? Elon Musk's Neuralink implant will "merge" humans with AI Tesla founder Elon Musk has launched tech startup Neuralink to build implants that connect human brains with computer… www.dezeen.com How about the “designer babies” that will soon be arriving who are genetically pre-dispositioned to have higher intelligence capabilities? How does a normal person compete with them in terms of employment qualifications? But, there is a caveat to this scenario. And, that is the more augmentation and automation that occurs, the fewer jobs are available. What then? Can’t Stop the Tsunami This and more is inevitable and within a relatively very short timeframe. You may think you won’t be alive to see most of these advancements, but you could be quite wrong on that. You also may believe that it won’t affect you very much while you are alive. Are you willing to take that chance? The tsunami is coming and it is virtually impossible to stop. All we can do is to ensure we fortify our communities and infrastructure to minimize the potential damage such a tsunami can cause. And, that fortification begins with you recognizing the weak points, then working to improve them. So, What Really Demands My Consideration? The US Transhumanist Party has laid out a detailed framework for important considerations moving forward. Many of the issues that we need to bring into the open include, but are not limited to: • Individual privacy and liberty over how to apply technology to one’s personal life. • Tolerance and inclusivity of all individuals of all races, genders, classes, religions, creeds, national origins, and other characteristics. • Support of most technologies but opposition to certain detrimental technologies (e.g., weapons of mass destruction, privacy-infringing technologies, engineering of new pathogens). • Opposition to nuclear weapons, support of complete nuclear disarmament, even if unilateral. • Support for research on the eradication of disease. • Morphological freedom. • Support of all values and efforts toward cultivation of science, technology, reason. • Support of all emerging technologies that improve the human condition, including: ° Autonomous vehicles ° Electric vehicles ° Economical solar power ° Safe nuclear power ° Hydroelectricity ° Geothermal power ° Applications for the sharing of durable goods ° Artificial intelligence ° Biotechnology ° Nanotechnology ° Robotics ° Rapid transit ° 3D printing ° Vertical farming ° Electronic devices to detect and respond to trauma ° Beneficial genetic modification of plants, animals, and human beings • Ending the drug war. • Reforming the prison system to reduce the incarcerated population. • Universal Basic Income (UBI) — not conditional on life circumstances, occupations, other income, or wealth. • Reasonable measures to fund space travel. • Using science and technology to eliminate disabilities. • Ending the two-party duopoly. • Life extension / anti-aging. • Removal of barriers to medical research and deployment of treatments. • Reducing the national debt. • Alternative sources of energy and technological implementations. • Increasing the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). • Support for political, economic, and cultural experimentation — e.g., seasteads and micronations. • Children’s rights proportional to their rational faculties. • Animal welfare (but not “animal liberation”). • Opposition to intolerant, rights-violating, anti-technological, and compulsion-imposing doctrines be they religious or secular.

Story originally appeared on my Medium profile: https://medium.com/predict/move-over-digital-dna-here-come-metabolomes-1c3f8f4e611c Digital data storage innovations are moving so quickly, it’s becoming harder and harder to keep up! Stock photo of DNA run through Deep Dream Generator Soon, 463 Exabytes of Data will be Produced Daily And, we need to store it all, apparently. If you’re unfamiliar with how much an exabyte is, picture it this way: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 quintillion) bytes or fills about 2,000 cabinets in a 4-story data center the size of a city block. Now, imagine we would need 463 of these buildings to be filled every single day. Entire cities of data centers would need to be built to house data using our current storage methods. It is kinda hard to even fathom this amount of information and it is simply unfeasible to continue storing data the way we do now. Digital DNA vs. Metabolomes I’ve already written a few articles about Digital DNA and explored the ideas of devising a way to encode worldly knowledge as instincts into humans. Or, perhaps a little far-fetched, exploring the potential to inject Digital DNA with top secret information into dignitaries for safe-keeping. The fact of the matter is, we are simply producing more data than our current methods of storage can handle. We need to find better solutions and fast. Now, just a few days ago researchers published findings that are taking digital storage possibilities one step further by identifying a way to add digital data onto artificial metabolomes. According to Wikipedia, a metabolome is: The complete set of small-molecule chemicals found within a biological sample. The biological sample can be a cell, a cellular organelle, an organ, a tissue, a tissue extract, a biofluid or an entire organism. Organisms (like humans, for example) use metabolomes to regulate our metabolisms. It’s pretty easy to understand that the metabolomes transmit information. But, researchers said that information can be harder to generalize and quantify. They wanted to prove that metabolomes could precisely encode digital data. This is big news packed into a tiny little package. Why? Because depending on the situation and types of molecules, the concoction can store more data than DNA. What’s even more interesting is the fact that metabolites can interact with one another and form new compounds. So, these compounds not only store the data, but they can also manipulate it and perform computations within metabolite mixtures. So, How Do They Do It? The images below are of a cat (17 kilobytes) and an ibex (6 kilobytes) in size. Image of a cat. (a) (i) A 17,424-bit image written into 1452 mixtures from a 12-metabolite subset of the library. (ii) The image recovered using one discriminating mass per metabolite. (iii) The image recovered using a regression combining 16 peaks per molecule. Credit: Brown, retrieved from PLOS ONE. Image of an ibex. These mixtures encoded the 6142-bit image shown in (f). In (g), we recover the image with a 2.5σ decision threshold, producing approximately 2% cumulative read/write error. Credit: Brown, retrieved from PLOS ONE. The presence or absence of one metabolite in one spot encodes one bit (a 0 or a 1) of information. A few of the metabolites they used may sound familiar: Glutamine Phenylalanine Tryptophan Sorbitol Thiamine Riboflavin Using these and a wide array of other essential building blocks of human (and animal) life, researchers created libraries of six and 12 metabolites. This means each mixture could encode either six or 12 bits. Then, they adjusted the mixture of the metabolites in thousands of different combinations, all done with a liquid-handling robot. The nanoliter-sized droplets were then allowed to dry. Once the tiny spots were dry, it left behind the metabolites arranged in a very specific manner. Using a mass spectrometer microscope, researchers could read back the position of the metabolites and decode the data. Think of it as a really small paint-by-numbers canvas. After some fine-tuning in the arrangement of the metabolites, they could adjust the quality of the image when it was retrieved. Notice the grains in the images. Of course, these images are tiny. This alone would not put a dent in the amount of data we need to store. But, it is a solid proof-of-concept say the researchers, and there are thousands of metabolites that can be used. This means there is a lot of room for scaling-up the data that can be stored. A Fatal Flaw or Feature? However, one potential drawback is that some metabolites interact with one another which may result in loss or corruption of the data. We don’t know yet if it is a fatal bug in the system or one that could possibly become a feature. As mentioned before, it may help us manipulate the data in unimaginable ways, such as allowing for the metabolites to perform their own computations. In my mind, this lends value to the prospect of being able to encode knowledge into our minds and bodies that allow us to have the world’s knowledge as literally part of our being. Instinctually. Maybe instead of connecting devices to our brains, we could simply swallow a pill, or sprinkle a dash of metabolite mixtures onto our salad to gain entire encyclopedias of knowledge. Seeing advancements like this tends to make one get lost in the realm of possibility, doesn’t it?

Good day, It just happens that I got to know about this miraculous project just yesterday due to our local media and weak representation anywhere else where I have been, and I am now within the first 165,000 verified Asgardians. I was wondering, what is the role of everyone else after that initial 100k? I read in another post that *only* the first 100k would be allowed to vote, and given "extra responsibilities". I feel that would be quite unfair, as I, myself, am committed to this project quite 100% and would gladly take any responsibilities directed to me in purpose of bringing the project to life, and other rights "exclusive" to the first adopters. I also did not have the possibility to be in the first due to lack of information (if you pin this on me, I will appreciate it though not think the same way). We would however be equal in rights excluding Head of Nation and Asgardia Ministers, right? This isn't any Kickstarter project. Please, do not take this comment as an attack against Asgardia or a desperate lust for power as I am just quite confused about these "pre-order benefits" and would appreciate a clarification. ------------------------- Feel free to move this thread to another board if needed, as I really did not know where this falls. Yours truly, S

Hi and good whatever time you are having at the moment. Found about this ambitious project briefly from our local business news site, and IMMEDIATELY took my time and submitted the registration form, did not even care if this was real or not. Glad to see it is. So, I'm an 18 years old aviation enthusiast from our small country called Finland. I study at high school and am at my final stages. In my pastime I usually entertain myself with movies and watching gameplay, as I do not have a powerful PC at the moment. I'm also quite keen runner, as I run at least the amount of a half marathon in a week on the side of my studies. On the side of that, I study aerodynamics as a hobby and prepare myself for my military service in the Finnish Air Force as fighter pilot. I am eager to use that skill in the favor of building our dearest nation of Asgardia. I believe fondly in this project and hope I am still around to see it success. I believe in the importance of communication, and as there will be an outrageous amount of different languages, I would be glad to contribute my part of presenting our unique and bizarre language if needed. Also I have great skills in English even if say so myself (at least I hope that's true, haha), so global communication wouldn't be a problem. Hoping you all the greatest, see you all on the forums and let's make this happen! Yours sincerely, S

Good evening(?) everyone, this project was just on a Finnish news site and I wonder how many Finnish people actually went all the way and signed up for this...? Uh, anyway so nice to meet everyone, regardless where you're from. My english isn't the best possible and I'm sorry about that- I just haven't spend much time on social media actually talking to people and learning the language. Also because I'm slightly Autistic I feel kind of awkward communicating with others unless it's about my own interests, but I'm willing to give this a try. We're all different individuals after all but what we have in common might be that we want something to change..? Or maybe just curiosity? Curiosity is great! Personally I'm just so fed up with the wealthy materialistic lifestyle where the only purpose in life seems to be just owning stuff. Also I'm endlessly curious about learning alternative ways to do things, so I thought being a part of this project could be an extremely satisfying experience. My personal hobbies are drawing, hiking, programming, videogames and traditional table-top games. Which all are basically just forms of exploring the world inside- and outside my head. Chill stuff like that. I also have to pay extra attention on nutrition because I'm really allergic to some preservatives and colourants and kind of forced to cook most of my own food. I could kinda call it a hobby too since it's really fun to hunt on bazaars for exotic ingredients for making up my own recipes. And I like people, in general. Why to waste your energy on disliking them? (Just saying because I often face this misconception that Autistic people are just really negative and nihilistic which isn't quite right.) Ps; If we make it to the space during my lifetime... man, I really hope there will be cats. I really need cats to function properly. And kimchi. That's pretty much it. 👋👋

Greeting to anyone reading this! Hopefully, this project of ours will lead to something beautiful, if not always the intended result. I'm a student of security management, dealing with and learning of all forms and aspect of security.Specifically interested in geopolitics, security services and general global skullduggery.