[extropy-chat] BMJ as a transhumanist journal

[Anders Sandberg]

I read the staid old British Medical Journal, and it is occasionally
delights me with transhumanist ideas.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/suppl_1/s8
"Computers: transcending our limits?" says:

"But extrapolation does not acknowledge the complexity of evolution. A
more exciting scenario may be unfolding, in which the future is not
predetermined by immutable forces but shaped by our values, our
interactions, and our will to survive as autonomously as possible against
all odds.5 The 21st century computer age gives us the opportunity to
create a "noosphere,"6 a true planetary thinking network with individual
but interdependent humans as its nodes. The exponential development of
wireless networks, mobile computing tools, and the internet may already be
giving us a glimpse of a future in which we could work as "humanodes" in a
true global superorganism.7 "

(this is in a supplement on medical milestones,
http://www.bmj.com/content/vol334/suppl_1/ )

And the Christmas issue, besides fun papers on the dangers of sword
swallowing and whether surgeons look more dashing than doctors also
discusses how Web 2.0 is changing medicine
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7582/1283
virtual drug companies
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7582/1315
the next "startling" technologies to change medicine
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7582/1308
(Molecular medicine and biometrics, Nanotechnology, Wave technology,
Fabricators, Robotics and simulation)
and looks back at 1986 to see how good past predictions have been
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7582/1311
(reasonably good in fact, although they tend to overestimate the rate of
progress).

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University