This is an extra-ordinary photo. It was modified using HDR like I posted about here. For the full effect it “Looks best Large on Black”

I imagine this is what a city of our time would look like to someone who has lived their entire life in a rural culture with little technology. Maybe living the way their ancestors did thousands of years ago, and being isolated from the modern world. If they had climbed the top of a mountain to discover a modern city for the first time, I think it would look like this to them, a magical and unbelievable place.

This photo makes Hong Kong look very futuristic, and I’m sure Hong Kong is very futuristic in reality as well.

On a similar note, I came across an article about noted futurist Ray Kurzweil. His views are very much along the lines to the Transhumanists philosophy that I wrote about here. Some of this stuff sounds straight out of a science fiction story, but it seems people give alot of crediblity to his ideas. From the article…

If you went around saying that in a couple of decades we’ll have cell-sized, brain-enhancing robots circulating through our bloodstream, or that we’ll be able to upload a person’s consciousness into a computer, people would probably question your sanity.

But if you say things like that and you’re Ray Kurzweil, you get invited to dinner at Bill Gates’ house – twice – so he can pick your brain for insights on the future of technology. The Microsoft chairman calls him a “visionary thinker and futurist.”

I’m sure a city like the one above would look completely unbelievable to someone from times past. Maybe the future Mr. Kurzweil paints a picture of looks similarly unbelievable to us, here in the present. God willing, we will see what happens in the next 20 or 40 years or so. It’s definately wild stuff to say the least.

Photography: Beach Party by lobster rocket

Transhumanist beach party? or even invading body hackers? Probably not, but an interesting pic none the less.

I’ve recently learned about a philosophy called Transhumanism… According to Wikipedia (at the time of writing)…

Transhumanism (sometimes symbolized by >H or H+) is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as stupidity, suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death.

It sounds to me like “Body Hacking” to go beyond our current human limits. To a certain degree we are already doing this. From standard medical procedures and devices like pacemakers, to the new weight-lose surgeries, and to even the use of steriods. Some of these things are helpful, and some are harmful. But it sounds like Transhumanism proposes to take it entirely to another level.

From Wikipedia…

Transhumanist thinkers postulate that human beings will eventually be transformed into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label “posthuman.”

So Transhumanists are thinking along the lines of a future where we exploit the knowledge of the human body to such a degree that we’re not even considered human but “posthuman”, maybe like Cyborgs or something. They are even thinking of escaping death, but is that even possible by human means? Some propose that we could theoretically take our brain and download all the info to some kind of manufactured brain that we could exist or be stored in. And while in theory it seems it could be remotely possible, what about the soul. I know not everyone believes in a soul but it seems to me that there is something that makes the human existence reliant upon more than just the brain or even the human body. If you take a step back and look at the big picture, man truly has dominion over the earth like no other creature. And when you look at the human world as a whole, there is a lot more to humanity than just carnal human bodies.

I’ll leave it at that as I don’t want to go on too much. But to say the least, it’s kind of scary that people would become “Body Hackers” to such a degree.