Technological Transcendence: An Interview with Giulio Prisco

Technological Transcendence: An Interview with Giulio Prisco: "A character in Ken MacLeod’s 1998 novel The Cassini Division refers to the Singularity as “the Rapture for nerds” (though it should be duly noted that in that novel the Singularity occurs anyway!). This represents a moderately recurrent meme in certain circles – to denigrate transhumanism by comparing it to extreme religious notions. But not all transhumanists consider such comparisons wholly off-base. While transhumanism differs from traditional religions in being based around reason more centrally than faith, it does have some commonality in terms of presenting a broad vision of the universe, with implications on the intellectual level but also for everyday life. And it does present at least some promise of achieving via science some of the more radical promises that religion has traditionally offered – immortality, dramatic states of bliss, maybe even resurrection."