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 On Thursday I attended an Art + The Brain event in collaboration with Dr. Mark S. Cohen. This comes as extra credit for me, although I really would have attended regardless of the incentive. In my email correspondence with Dr. Cohen, I thanked him for his multidisciplinary model and continuous pursuit of exploring his passions through research as it inspires undergraduates like myself. Surely we do not frequently come across individuals of this sort who have had such profound standing in art (music), science (neurology), and technology (engineering). From his title screen we can see that Dr. Cohen is a true interdisciplinary. My email correspondence with Dr. Cohen actually precedes this event. A year or two ago, I introduced myself to him as a consumer of the work of he and his previous doctoral student, Sam Harris [1], who has frequented my blogs. Dr. Cohen and Dr. Harris share one of the most highly cited articles in all of science [1]. I responded on the same email thread as be...

In my last blog, I used the platform of nanotechnology to answer the climate crisis issue in a manner that restores our home planet. Yet this same issue yields solutions that require that we leave our home planet, too.  [1] Ambitions such as Elon Musk's determination to start settling Mars in 2025 have given rise not only to sci-fi like discourse, but dope shirts like this one! In the past decade or two, private companies have reinvigorated the pursuit of space exploration, with companies like SpaceX creating reusable rockets in order to reduce the cost of transportation to space stations and planets [ibid]. Blue Origin moved into the orbital spaceflight technology development business in 2014 initially as a contractual rocket engine supplier, but is now also in the business of creating entire reusable rockets and operating businesses from space [2]. The commercial side of such technological companies is also present in Virgin Galactic's aim to provide suborbital spaceflights ...

Nanotechnology is the reorientation of matter at the atomic and subatomic level [1]. As I have emphasized in previous blogs, nanotechnology is not something that humans created, but a tool that we have discovered, from butterfly wings, to water properties and reptilian features [2]. Nanoscience has transitioned from the theoretical to the applicational, with hundreds of companies investing in this arena and countless visionaries claiming it's potential to radically transform our technology based society [3].  In last week's blog I mentioned futurist thinkers like Ray Kurzweil, who has long wrote about a world where all physical properties can be understood as indivisible digital units of information. At the theoretical level, nanoscience has the capacity to alter our perception of our physical selves and the world around us [4]. Measuring matter at the nanoscale is incomprehensible to us, therefore we need the help of art and aesthetics to help us imagine such infinitesimal dis...

Last Thursday I attended the inaugural event Poetic Realities  held by the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts [1]. Here I was able to meet Dr. Vesna, several classmates, and some of the TA's -- not to mention the wine and tasty cuisine that enhanced the fancy atmosphere. [2] Poetic Realities took place in the New Wight Gallery, an exhibition space by the Broad Art Center. When entering the gallery I observed an eerily portrayed dystopia that emphasized motion animation [3], an open space to the left which allowed for multisensory immersion [4], an interview with a Martian [5], a mural featuring generations of the same identity seated together [6], and, coming almost full circle, the skeleton of a Colombian mammoth [7]. The breadth of these works does not neatly fall into any of the specific modules that we have been covering in this course, so it may be best to reinforce this exhibition as a beacon of the third culture where futuristic humanists and the scientific spirit first me...

Like many modern students, I am convinced that physical reality is far from being fully explained, that despite my stubborn will towards rational objectivism, our brains are wired to infer that there is some higher reality, even to the point of fabricating religious narratives or constructing cultural consolants to quell our need to create meaning. For years, I answered to this higher call with faithful piety, and in my deconstruction of faith I turned to neurobiologists like Andrew Newberg, who suggests that our capacities for self-transcendence and self-awareness have evolved as possible by-prodcucts of our longing for sexual reproduction and metaphorical immortality [1].  [2] " Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science" was a saving grace of sorts during my post-religious existiential crisis. In this autobiography, the author journeyed from fundamentalist Christian culture to online atheism before settling in a space of beautiful agno...

No weekly topic more has kept me more up to date with human progress than the recent revolutions bubbling within the biotechnology industry. These tools offer the promise of prolonging our lifespan, conquering threats to our health and mortality, and enhancing aesthetics and athletics [1]. [1] Improved understanding of genetic and epigenetic sequencing offers the promise of exceeding human limitations, yet also raises concerns about ethical violations. Such developments are realizing the dreams of early futurist societies, like the Extropians, who have advocaded since the 80s for the maximization of human potential [2]. In a more real way, such forward thinkers have echoed the calls of ancient philosophers like Aristotle and post-Enlightenment thinkers like Nietzche to overcome our beastly nature. However, arguably no text has been more influential than Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology", which urges present humanity to "overcome ...