Futique Neologisms 2

AEONOMICS — (from aeon and economics) n. The study of the economic problems of immortal existence. [Mark Plus; August 1991]

A-LIFE — n. Artificial life: The modelling of complex, life-like behavior in computer programs. A-Life forms can evolve and produce behaviors not contained within rules set by the programmers.

AMORTALIST — n. A person who opposes death.

ATHEOSIS — n. The process of recovering from belief in God. [Mark Plus; August 1991]

AUGMENT — n. A person whose physical or cognitive abilities have been technologically expanded beyond the range of natural humans. [David Brin, The Postman]

CEREBROSTHESIS — (from cerebral and prosthesis) n. An electronic device interfaced with the brain to overcome a neurological deficiency, such as normal human intelligence. (Cf. neuroprosthesis - see Extropy #7). [Mark Plus; August 1991]

CONNECTIONISM — n. The approach to cognitive science that gives a fundamental explanatory role to neuron-like interconnections rather than to formal or explicit rules of thought.

CRYOCRASTINATE — v. To put off making arrangements for cryonic suspension. [Mark Plus; August 1991]

CYBERCIDE — n. The killing of a person’s projected virtual persona in cyberspace. This may be part of a VR game, or may be an act of vandalism. [Max More; August 1991]

CYBERFICTION — Science fiction embodying the

technological ideas of cyberpunk, without necessarily embodying cyberpunk’s amoralism or nihilism. [Max More, May 1991]

ECOCALYPSE — (from ecological and apocalypse) n. A projected ecological catastrophe which would destroy all life on Earth. [Mark Plus; August 1991]

EUPSYCHIA — n. A society specifically designed for improving the self-fulfilment and psychological health of all people. A culture or sub-culture made up of psychologically healthy or mature or self-actualizing people. A Eupsychian sub-culture is ‘decentralized, voluntary yet coordinated, productive, and with a powerful and effective code of ethics (which works).’ (Maslow.) [Abraham Maslow, 1954]

EVOLUTURE — n. An organism produced through evolution; the antonym of creature. [Mark Plus, June 1991]

EXTROPIA — n. An abstract conception of evolving communities embodying Extropian values of Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, and Cooperative Diversity. May be instantiated in virtual cultural communities such as those on the Net, or in future actual communities such as Extropolis or Free Oceana. [Tom W. Bell, 1991]

EXTROPOLIS — n. A proposed Extropian community located in our solar system, probably at L-4 or L-5 orbits, or the Asteroid Belt. [Max More, 1991]

EXTROPY - n. The process of expanding personal, social, psychological, and spatial freedom, expanding intelligence, wisdom, opportunity,

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lifespan, personal power and diversity. The collection of forces which oppose entropy. [Tom W. Bell, 1988]

EXTROPIAN — n. One who affirms Extropianism, or anyone who consciously promotes extropy.

EXTROPIC — a. Any action or process that promotes extropy.

IMMORTECHNICS — n. Collectively, the technologies which are applied to attempt radical life extension, such as calorie-restricted dieting, cryonics, uploading, etc. [Mark Plus, July 1991]

INFOMORPH — n. A uploaded intelligence, or information entity, which resides in a computer. See Charles Platt, The Silicon Man, p.109. [1991]

NANARCHIST — n. Someone who circumvents government control to use nanotechnology, or someone who advocates this. [Eli Brandt, October 1991]

NEUROCOMPUTATION — n. The study of how natural and artificial neural networks process information.

PARTIALATE — n. A partial personality used as a personality surrogate (see persogate). [Max More, July 1991. See Cryonics, November 1991]

PERSOGATE — A portable expert system used as a personality surrogate (as in Bruce Sterling’s Schizmatrix). [R.E. Whitaker, June 1991]

SINGULARITARIAN — n. One who advocates the idea that technological progress will cause a singularity in human history. (cf. Singularity in Extropy #7.) [Mark Plus, August 1991]

TRANSBIOMORPHOSIS (TRANSBIOLOGICAL METAMORPHOSIS) — n. The transformation of the human body from a natural, biological organism into a superior, consciously designed vehicle of personality. [Max More, August 1991]

TRANSCLUSION — n. A thing existing in more than one place at once; virtual copying of information used in hypertext systems, such as Xanadu. [Ted Nelson, Byte, September 1990.]

VIRTUAL COMMUNITY — n. A community of persons not located in close physical proximity but forming a cultural community across computer networks.¹

VIRTUAL RIGHTS — n. Rights given for convenience to a partial; these rights are really rights of the person whose partial it is, rather than of the partial itself. Similar in some respects to currently existing corporate rights. [Max More, July 1991; See Cryonics, November 1991.]

¹Both Max More and Tom W. Bell have been using this term in recent months but they may have unknowingly picked it up from elsewhere.

Neurocomputing 5: Artificial Life

Continued from p.32.

SOURCES

The Game of Life

Martin Gardner. On cellular automata, self-reproduction, the Garden of Eden, and the Game of “Life.” Scientific American, 224(2), 1971.

Boids

Craig W. Reynolds. Flocks, herds, and schools: A distributed behavior model (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH ‘87), Computer Graphics 21 (4), 25-34.

Insects

M. Mitchell Waldrop. Fast, cheap, and out of control. Science, 248 (May 25, 1990), 959-961.

Strong A-Life

Christopher G. Langton. Artificial life. in C.G. Langton, ed., Artificial Life: Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity. Redwood City: Addison Wesley, 1988.

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