Future Based x Inverse Surveillance x Rudy van Belkom
Rudy van Belkom is a futures researcher at the Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT). He recently published his book about ethics in the design process (‘AI no longer has a plug’) that offers developers, policymakers, philosophers and basically anyone with an interest in AI, tools for integrating ethics into the AI design process. The main question of his research is always: what future do we want? We need to ask ourselves what purpose we want to use technology for, rather than seeing it as purpose in itself. How can we use technology to create a better world? And what exactly is a better world? Currently Rudy is focusing on the impact of technology on the future of Democracy. In addition he developed an ethical design game for AI, inspired by the scrum process, that can be used to translate ethical issues into practice. The essence of the game is based on the position paper that he wrote together with the HU research group on AI and was accepted for ECAI 2020: ‘An Agile Framework for Trustworthy AI’. Van Belkom also investigated the role of AI in the future of his own field.
Waves of Identity – Dan Molter
In this first podcast for the Creating Life project, our host Marjolein Pijnappels goes into conversation with Dan Molter. Dan is a naturalist, expert mushroom photographer, and lecturer of philosophy University of Tennessee Knoxville. His research is in scientific metaphysics, with a focus on questions of biological individuality. Questions, such as “What is an organism?”, are answered in the context of scientific theories and models, and these latter tend to carve nature in incongruent ways. In this podcast, Marjolein talks to Dan about the life cycle and multiplicity of mushrooms, and ventures into the analogy of mushroom's multitude to human beings: Where does the individual end and the other begin? And what is a species anyway? Is it a group of organisms? Must they be similar in some way? About the project: In the project Creatig Life in collaboration with Marjolein Pijnappels, we explore how life is created and sustained on our planet. Taking a closer look at human birth, mycorrhiza connectivity, chimerism and the pan-microbiome from a philosophical and personal
Animal Awareness
Aysha Akhtar, M.D., M.P.H., is a double Board-certified neurologist and preventive medicine/public health specialist. She is demonstrating how there is a mutual benefit to both humans and animals when animals are protected. Dr. Akhtar is the President and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences, which is catalyzing the replacement of unreliable animal testing with more effective human-specific research techniques. A U.S veteran, she previously served as Deputy Director of the U.S. Army Traumatic Brain Injury Program developing the Army’s brain injury prevention and treatment strategies for soldiers. As a Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Dr. Akhtar frequently deployed to assist with national public health emergencies. She is published in peer-reviewed journals including Lancet, Pediatrics, Journal of Public Health Policy and Reviews in the Neurosciences. Aysha is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She is the author of the two books, Our Symphony With Animals. On Health, Empathy and Our Shared Destinies and Animals and Public Health, which argues for the need for health institutions to
Articles
You Are a Planet Swarming with Life
You think about yourself as a unique individual, you experience yourself and your body as a whole. You have one name, but you should actually have many names. You are not one, you are an exuberant ever-changing crowd, a planet swarming with life, a symbiotic microbiome full of millions of micro-organisms that perform various, indispensable functions in your body. In fact, you are innumerable, always a 'we' and never merely an 'I'.
Running projects:
A project on the extraordinary nature of the ordinary things around us.
Future Based Scientific Imagination is a new project of the Future Based platform, hosted and curated by Sabine Winters. The philosophical quest of this project is based on the wish to understand more about the role of imagination in our understanding of the world. Furthermore, the different perspectives on the function of imagination, represents a wider perspective on questions on human knowledge: how we obtain knowledge and which beliefs we hold about the methodologies in acquiring knowledge. Special contributors are among other professor Vincent Icke, Astropreneur Nancy Vermeulen and Cybrog anthropologist Marques D Anderson. Read more.
Creating Life:
An exploration on what makes us human
In a series of three video essays created in collaboration with Marjolein Pijnappels, we explore how life is created and sustained on our planet. Taking a closer look at human birth, mycorrhiza connectivity, chimerism and the pan-microbiome from a philosophical and personal perspective, Marjolein wants to shed light on the different perspectives on the ability to bear life, on being alive, and on what defines being a human being in this particular aspect of life. The research will run from June through December 2021, begins with a personal examination and reflection on the three topics around the theme “Creating Life”: Life Cycle, Multitudes, Networked Beings. The final result, in collaboration with a filmmaker, will be cast in three short video essays that will be presented on our website, and during a meetup. Read more.
Witchcraft made Science – how witchcraft created modern science.
Guided and curated by Lieke Wouters, we’ll be discussing how the common stereotype of the witch, the old crone wearing a black pointy hat while riding on a broomstick with a black cat in tow, stands in the way of important herstories about women healers, midwives and other non-conforming women and the impact of witch-hunts from the 16th century onwards on the development of science. What can we learn from these anti-patriarchal re-tellings and how do they influence our view on gender diversity in science? Read more.
BrainPan Colloquial – Shifting experiences.
BrainPan Colloquial – is a collaboration between Future Based and Aidan Lyon on shifting of experiences and the edges of perception. In a series of three gatherings, we aim to question what consciousness is, in what ways you can enhance awareness, and what lies behind everyday sensations when we observe them with attention. This series merges meditation, philosophy, motion, technology, poetry and experience. More information, following soon.
Events:
What do you think the end of the world would look like? Stories about the apocalypse and post-apocalyptic living have been popular across time and space, such as zombie novel World War Z by Max Brooks and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which involves a flu pandemic. We use it to escape reality,
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