More Than Human

Ramez Naam: The World Needs Innovation. Don’t Be a Spectator, Participate!

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Yesterday I interviewed Ramez Naam for my singularity podcast.

Ramez is the author of an award-winning, timely and easy to digest book on the ethical, political, economic and other implications of transhumanism titled More Than Human.

Since I enjoyed reading the book very much I simply had to interview Naam and ask him to talk more about his ideas. During our conversation we discuss a variety of topics such as: Ramez’ early interest philosophy, physics and computer science; the motivation behind his work at Microsoft on projects such as MS Word, Outlook and the Bing search engine; the inspiration behind his book on transhumanism; human evolution and the way technology has become a crucial part of who we are; playing God in general and altering the human DNA in particular; life extension and the probability of overcoming death; artificial intelligence, the technological singularity and why he is not a singularitarian; the limits to growth, resource depletion, innovation and optimism.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Ramez Naam?

Ramez Naam is a computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is the author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, which the LA Times called “a terrific survey of current work and future possibilities in gene therapy, neurotechnology, and other fields.” For More Than Human, Naam was awarded the 2005 H.G. Wells Award for Contributions to Transhumanism.

Ramez spent 13 years at Microsoft, where he lead development on early versions of Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and most recently the Bing search engine.

Naam is a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and blogs at UnbridledSpeculation.com. He lives in Seattle, where he is currently working on his next book The Infinite Resource: Harnessing the Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet.