Episode description

Dr. Anders Sandberg (computational neuroscientist, futurist, transhumanist and author) is our featured guest.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 3, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 35 minutes] Part one of three with Dr. Sandberg.

Topics: benefits we may get with our first neural implants; augmentations we already have and some we may have soon; the IQ enhancing drugs in widespread use on campuses today; the good and bad and political ramifications of the far more powerful IQ enhancing drugs we will see in the future; people (such as the founders of TransAlchemy.com) who feel that any augmention of the human body is terrible and should be prevented; the digital simulation of a human brain using computational neuroscience; the robotic future of automobiles; and Modafinil use by surgeons, athletes, truck drivers and nuclear power plant operators.

Dr. Anders Sandberg is currently postdoctoral research assistant for the Oxford group of the EU ENHANCE Project at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is also a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute (Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University). He is cofounder of and writer for the think tank Eudoxa. And between 1996 and 2000 he was Chairman of the Swedish Transhumanist Association.

His other interests include physics, astronomy, biomedicine, psychology, complexity theory, art, science fiction, roleplaying, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, information visualization, intelligence amplification technologies, and the philosophy and politics of human enhancement.