The Bird Clouds

We supposed at first that the mental unity of these little avians was telepathic, but in fact it was not. It was based on the unity of a complex electromagnetic field, in fact on "radio" waves permeating the whole group. Radio, transmitted and received by every individual organism, corresponded to the chemical nerve current which maintains the unity of the human nervous system. Each brain reverberated with the ethereal rhythms of its environment; and each contributed its own peculiar theme to...

 The Race Where Children are Fathered by the Tribe

The key to the understanding of this race is, I believe, its strange method of reproduction, which was essentially communal. Every individual was capable of budding a new individual; but only at certain seasons, and only after stimulation by a kind of pollen emanating from the whole tribe and carried on the air. The grains of this ultra-microscopically fine pollen dust were not germ cells but "genes," the elementary factors of inheritance. The precincts of the tribe were at all times faintly ...

 Principles of Transhumanism and Conflict

All transhumanists to date would likely also have no disagreement with the principles of intelligent technology, self-direction, or rational thinking. Intelligent Technology “means designing and managing technologies not as ends in themselves but as effective means for improving life. Applying science and technology creatively and courageously to transcend ‘natural’ but harmful, confining qualities derived from our biological heritage, culture, and environment.” Self-direction means �...

 The Gas Lamp Brought Networked Collective Life

Wolfgang Schivelbusch (1995) argues that one of the most important transformations of networked urban life came with the rise of the gas lamp. The introduction of gas ended the autonomy of oil lamps and candles whereby each household effectively supplied its own energy needs. Gas represented the industrialization of light, transforming households into nodes of a centralized power source, linking the domestic and intimate to larger structures of capital and the state. In this way, Schivelbusch...

 Human Rights

After ages of error, after wandering in all the mazes of vague and defective theories, writers upon politics and the law of nations at length arrived at the knowledge of the true rights of man, which they deduced from this simple principle: that he is a being endowed with sensation, capable of reasoning upon and understanding his interests, and of acquiring moral ideas. They saw that the maintenance of his rights was the only object of political union, and that the perfection of the socia...