3 replies to this topic

[John_Ventureville]

I had only done a cursory glance at the "Transcendent Man Live" advertising (by Kurzweil and also Fathom) when I went to see it. At the box office, I was told the ticket price was $15.00. I was offended that something I had already seen online (the Transcendent Man documentary) was so expensive (rising movie ticket prices is a big pet peeve of mine). I had thought the August 3rd presentation was the documentary with maybe 15-30 minutes of live panel talk tacked on at the end. And so I turned around and went home.

But when I went onto FB and read postings by friends, I realized my mistake! lol And unfortunately, it seems that attendance rates were dismally low across the nation. I tend to think the advertising which had the words "Transcendent Man" in large print, confused not just me, but many people, into making them think the live show was essentially the documentary! Argh!!!

Alex Lightman did a review of the show on his FB page, that gave it a positive, but somewhat mixed report. He was very impressed by Kurzweil and Kamen (especially Kamen's inventions that could solve the third world's terrible need for clean water and energy), but felt Wozniak was out of date with current tech, and that Kaku (despite in some ways doing quite well) sounded like he was quoting from his "Physics from the Future" book. Kaku was actually corrected by Kurzweil about the second law of thermodynamics, and later revealed himself to have a simplistic and inaccurate view of the science behind longevity research. Lightman also felt that Tam Le, Quincy Jones, and also the panel host were all out of their league there, and that Deepak Chopra was a gloom and doomer who wanted to be the center of attention, and should have had his sound connection turned off...

I realize this event will in time be available on DVD (I've heard that it will be out within a mere thirty days), but I wish I had gotten to see it on the big screen, and with other people who enjoy the same things I do. I asked the theater manager how many tickets had been sold for it, and he told me thirty. I wonder if anyone there was someone I would have known... Damn! Anyway, I hope every five or ten years that Kurzweil does an event like this one. It would be a cool way for him to explain/expound on how his predictions are coming along.


John Grigg

[trance]

I attended a showing here in Dallas. To be honest, you didn't really miss a whole lot. There were too many egos in the room, as it were.

Kurzweil's initial presentation was good, but you've seen most of it if you saw the documentary. They did include a number of clips taken out of the documentary throughout the session. For some reason, every time I see Kurzweil, he appears to be talking down to his audience -- no exception here either.

Wozniak was a bit of a distraction, in a goofy geek sort of way. During a few of the question and comment sections, he was rambling a bit incoherently ... maybe he didn't understand exactly what the question was, or his brain was processing far faster than his mouth could keep up with.

Deepak Chopra continually wanted to be the center of attention, and in a sense he was, due to the fact he was presented as a talking head hologram, not unlike the bottled heads in Futurama -- placed front and center stage of the other panelists.

During one of the first comment rounds, Chopra introduced the fact that maybe the new technology was a bad thing, or could be used more for evil purposes. Unfortunately, this theme remained within the comments for the duration of the entire session. Pity. Kurzweil and Kamen tried to bring it all back to a positive spin, but the "dark side" was continually discussed even if intertwined with the positive commentary. And of course, Chopra was the only one that worked in his own personal web sites and books into the narratives, all the while wearing his wife's designer sunglasses.

Kamen was probably the most realistic and refreshing commentator on the panel. He balanced out a lot of the egos and "dark side" commentary by just being himself, and being one of the few not trying to push an agenda or sell something, looking at truly helping all of mankind in some way with all of this.

Near the end, there was a "?disturbing" video clip of Suzanne Somers presented, but it was odd. Her face was distinctively digitally airbrushed to make her look like a chubby 30-year old instead, with absolutely no wrinkles, smile lines, or imperfections. It was just odd. Did I say that already? It added a weird fake cheapness, no truth in reality aspect, to that clip in particular, and the presentation as a whole, especially when the rest of the show was in HD big screen. Truthfully when she really looks like a normal 65 year old woman, with blond dyed hair:

http://upload.wikime...omers08TIFF.jpg

There were many topics discussed, much of which have been discussed on this website, and in Kurzweil's documentary of course. They spent a lot of time discussing the ramifications of the Internet, social networking, and technology ... a bit less on the Singularity, and aging.

It was about 2 hours, cost $15 ... there were probably only 15-20 people in the auditorium where I attended, which could have sat 300 people. Worth the cost of admission? Maybe.

Trance

[brokenportal]

There were 7 people on the panel, Kurzweil, Chopra (virtual projection), Kaku, Ptolemy, Wozniak, Kamen and an Asian lady I didnt recognize. Then there were two hosts. The video clips that were recorded and sent in that I can remember include Quincy Jones, Susan Somers and Bill Maher. The discussion was excellent. It brought the whole topic to life rather than venturing off into too many non directly related things. For example Dean Kamen could have talked extensively about how the troops are doing better with bionic arms and Chopra could have talked about meditating and chakras and transcending for 20 minutes or something like that, but they didnt.

It looked to me like an over ripe discussion, a discussion that could have been out on stages, on morning shows, on shows like Bill Mahers, more often. It looked pleasingly like the discussion was overdue and fit right into society, and it does. These advances all occur in increments and what we think of as a large leap in society, it seems really isnt as much of one as we think they will think it is, which is good.

They all helped balance the discussion out well. I didnt see too much gloom from Chopra at all, I thought he spoke a lot more intelligently about the topic than I would have thought and I thought the objection questions were well balanced (some naive to us yes but not to newcomers) and healthy for new people viewing it to see. Ive never associated Chopra with Transhumanism. I thought Kaku made it a lot more exciting. With Kurzweil there it was like watching Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior as a tag team. They fit together marvelously, which would have been to be expected really, but I think it set a precedent for future things in that sort of way. I could watch the two of them talk forever. I thought Dean and the Asian lady were playing catch up with the philosophy, trying to hang in there, and they didnt do too bad, it gave the others something more to feed off of to make points. Ptolemy provided a great, excited, infectious sort of a newcomers perspective and was an example of how the rest of the public can come to see this. Wozniak had good points that he was unable to follow through on and package tightly all the time. He seemed unprepared, like he doesnt talk about this much.

They talked a lot about indefinite life extension it seemed, which I thought was great of course. The whole production left me with a lot of impressions. One was that I just witnessed another important step up for this cause. Books and conferences and big donations and projects and all are great but a movie in the theaters is another wrung on the ladder all its own. Another impression I was left with was that I felt like a fish that finally got to swim in my own pond there for a few hours. There was a feeling of a cause in the process of coming together in the theater there. I could tell the people were talking about that sort of thing. It left me with the impression (reconfirmed) that the cause is alive and healthy and growing, that things are moving along, and that we can expect better and better things as we continue going. All the notions of the video are still very important even if I do know most of them like the back of my hand. For example I like how Kurzweil points out again that things might seem like they are moving slow but that its fine, that it exponentiality makes up the difference. For example he explains that half way through the genome project they were 1% done for which there was criticism, but that Kurzweil says was right on track, and that if you double it 7 more times you get 100%, which was exactly what happened.

But most importantly I came away with a stronger affirmation of the importance of the discussion. For example, I noticed that of the panelists and clips, the outreach team here at Longecity has sent letters out to Maher, Kaku, Somers, Wozniak and Ptolemy. We interviewed Ptolemy and chatted briefly with Wozniak. Wozniak said that indefinite life extension wasnt for him and that he was happy with the way his life was. In the movie he said he used to think that he didnt want indefinite life extension but that now he thinks he wants to be around for the singularity if he can. The importance of discussion, the panel was getting at, to try to help lead the way and show people that discussing these things is where moving forward is at. We should all keep up the discussions, the comments, the videos etc.. I might try to start say, 5 person youtube discussions and then splice the answers all together. I think they need to try to get that Transhumanism discussion into a more permanent platform, for example Bill Maher might be able to give them some leads on starting a weekly discussion panel like that on tv.

Attached Files

•  Transcendent Man Theater Stub Aug. 3rd 2011 002.jpg   206.61KB   2 downloads
•  Transcendent Man Theater Stub Aug. 3rd 2011 004.jpg   363.01KB   2 downloads

[neue regel]

I just got it, I hope it's good