VRTO 2016
Rationale:
Creators of technology tend to focus mainly on their customers without due
regard for how their technology will affect non-adopters. For more than 40
years I've lived everyday life in a tetherless free-roaming virtual reality
universe of my own making where I could see sound waves, radio waves, and more
profoundly, see sight itself. And my most profound discovery was not what was
inside that universe, but what was at its boundaries, especially its societal
boundaries. In the 1970s I could choose to live in a world where the speed of
light was exactly equal to zero, so I could see, touch, and hold radio waves as
virtual objects sitting perfectly still. In the 1990s this invention formed
the basis of my portfolio for successful admission to MIT MediaLab where I
founded the MIT wearable computing project as its first member, and brought
this concept to a global audience
[Negroponte 1997].
Urgency:
The long-term risks of artificially intelligent machines are well-known and
much talked about ("The Singularity is Near!"). Less understood, but more
immediately pressing, are the risks that humanistically intelligent entities
pose right now, whether facilitated by "smart buidings", "smart cities" (a
camera in every streetlight), or "cyborgs" with wearable or implantable
intelligence. This sensory intelligence augmentation technology is already
developed enough to be dangerous in the wrong hands, e.g. as a way for a
corrupt government or corporation to further augment its power and use it
unjustly.
History:
The Keynote at the
World Transhumanist Association's annual conference in 2004 connected this
question with the ethics communities, leading to what Minsky, Kurzweil, and I
call the "Sensularity" (sensory singularity) [Minsky, Kurzweil, Mann 2013].
Augmented reality is not just about eye glass, but it already affects all of us
ever hour of every day -- cities, buildings, cars, and now people, have
augmented sensory intelligence that affects us both virtually and in reality.
Action:
Accordingly, we, invite all of you to be not just signatories to the "laws" of
human augmentation, but to participate in the drafting and ratification of the
written draft of these "laws" on the morning of June 26th, together with:
For more info, see http://wearcam.org/code.htm
Steve Mann, Chief Scientist, Metavision.com
Dan Braverman:
Steve Mann: