Turing Church Online Workshop 2, OpenQwaq, Sunday December 11

UPDATE – Turing Church Online Workshop 2 videos

The Turing Church Online Workshop 2 will be held on Sunday, December 11, 2011, with a format similar to the Turing Church Online Workshop 1 on November 20, 2010, beginning at 9am PST (noon EST, 5pm UK, 6pm Continental EU).

The Workshop will explore transhumanist spirituality and “Religion 2.0″, the convergence of science and religion, highly imaginative future science and technologies for resurrection, emerging science and technologies for immortality, social and memetic engineering.

The technical implementation of the Workshop will be managed by teleXLR8 using the OpenQwaq VR technology. There are a limited number of seats available for those who wish to attend. On Sunday November 27 and Sunday December 4 at at 9am PST (noon EST, 5pm UK, 6pm Continental EU) there will be meetup and practice sessions for speakers and participants.

Some speakers in the pictures above.

Program: Turing Church online workshop 2 | KurzweilAI

Speakers, morning session, 9am PST to noon PST:

• Giulio Prisco
• James Hughes
• Martine Rothblatt
• Frank Tipler
• Ben Goertzel
• Remi Sussan

Speakers, afternoon session, 1pm PST to 4pm PST

• Lincoln Cannon
• Brent Allsop
• Dan Massey
• Andrew Warner
• Mike Perry
• Fred and Linda Chamberlain (pre-recorded talk)

Ken Hayworth on How to create a Connectome Observatory of the mouse brain and beyond, OpenQwaq, November 13 2011

See A Connectome Observatory for nanoscale brain imaging | KurzweilAI.

Ken Hayworth gave a talk and Q/A on How to create a Connectome Observatory of the mouse brain and beyond, in OpenQwaq, on November 13 2011.

New technologies now permit imaging brain tissue at resolutions approaching 5x5x5nm. voxel size, down to the protein level. “This is more than sufficient resolution to determine all the connectivity and the properties of the synapses that are needed to explain the functionality of the brain circuits,” Ken said.

“In 100 years, if we have the technology to bring someone back, it won’t be in a biological body,” Ken said in a New York Times article last year. “It is these scanning techniques and mind-uploading that, I think, will bring people back. This is a taboo topic in the scientific community. But we have a cure to death right here. Why aren’t we pursuing it?”

In the Q&A, participants compared connectome preservation via the chemical brain preservation techniques proposed by Ken’s Brain Preservation Foundation to cryonics.

“If there was really a concerted effort to develop brain preservation technology, it would be easy to have highly reliable hospital brain preservation procedures ready to go in any hospital before the end of the decade. It is all a matter of will,” Ken said.

There are two videos:

VIDEO 1, recorded by Catarina Lamm – Youtube | Blip.tv | Vimeo
VIDEO 2, recorded by Eugen Leitl – Youtube | Blip.tv | Vimeo