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Transhumanism is rampant in Silicon Valley. Many have failed to notice that transhumanism is the driving force behind giant companies like Google. Transhumanism has influence in both Silicon Valley and DARPA, the research agency of the US armed forces. Ray Kurzweil, dubbed the king of transhumanism and techno-prophet, has worked as Google's technical director since 2012. Kurzweil's visions include bringing his own father, who died in 1970, back to life using a DNA sample. Kurzweil has also served as an advisor to the US Army. Tech billionaire Elon Musk's company Neuralink, meanwhile, is developing a brain chip that could be used to control a computer with the power of thought. Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, meanwhile, is chasing eternal youth with, among other things, stem cell treatments. According to Anssi Ylirönni, transhumanism is worth taking an interest in right now precisely because its center has moved to Silicon Valley. - Research projects related to aging, aimed at extending lifespan and ultimately even immortality, are driven and funded by very influential actors. How to trip up death. But is death then a technical problem? According to Jani Moliisi, humanity invests vast sums in avoiding diseases and accidents, but not in deaths caused by old age. - Why should fixing or preventing age-related defects through technology be frowned upon? According to Moliisi, consciousness is nothing more than information: there is nothing that cannot be explained by the laws of physics. - I do not believe in the argument that a person has a soul that is not measurable, identifiable, or in any way perceivable. Because of this, Moliisi would like to live in this world for as long as possible - in some format, even for hundreds of years. - It is safer to trust that the world is a better thing before death. I hope life would go on as long as possible. I am not afraid of death: if it comes, it comes. That was my chance to experience this wondrous universe of ours.

Elon Musk's pledge on sight restoration. August 19, 2026 THE pledge may sound audacious, even provocative to his critics, but Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive, has been quite insistent on Neuralink's plan to implant its first Blindsight device, which aims to create visual perception by sending signals directly to the brain's visual cortex, bypassing the eyes and optic nerves. Neuralink is a neurotechnology company co-founded by Musk that develops implantable brain-computer interfaces. Speaking virtually at the Samson International Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv, Israel, on May 18 this year, Musk said Neuralink planned to perform its first Blindsight implant later this year. Hear him: "Even if somebody has lost both eyes, lost the optic nerve, or was born blind, it will initially provide limited vision. But over time, I think it could provide very precise vision, or perhaps even superhuman vision." No human Blindsight implantation has yet been publicly reported, so this remains an ambition rather than an established medical outcome. Neuralink's Blindsight received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Breakthrough Device designation in September 2024. That designation should not be confused with FDA approval. It is intended to expedite the development and regulatory review of promising devices for serious conditions, while requirements for safety and effectiveness remain. The underlying scientific idea is not fantasy. Researchers have investigated cortical visual prostheses that bypass damaged parts of the visual pathway and electrically stimulate the visual cortex. Human studies have demonstrated that such stimulation can produce visual sensations, often described as points or patterns of light. But transforming those sensations into useful, high-resolution vision remains an enormous challenge. The challenge may be greater for people blind from birth because normal visual development depends partly on experience during critical periods of brain development. Musk's "superhuman vision" therefore remains, for now, a technological ambition rather than demonstrated clinical capability. Although Musk's endeavours have drawn controversy, the possibilities being pursued through Neuralink should not be overlooked. Even partial success with Blindsight could expand the technological options available to people with profound vision loss. A similar principle applies to Toyota's Kaizen concept of continuous improvement. Innovation is rarely one miraculous leap. More often, it is the cumulative result of experimentation, failure, correction and continued investment. Amid these realities lies an important message for Nigeria. Musk's project may sound impossible, but he has repeatedly helped to turn extraordinarily ambitious technological projects into working businesses, even though his promised timelines have often proved excessively optimistic. His achievement is not that every prediction comes true on schedule. It is that organisations under his leadership have repeatedly attempted technically difficult things, absorbed failures, iterated and sometimes produced major breakthroughs. Through SpaceX, Musk helped make the reuse of orbital-class rocket boosters routine with Falcon 9, changing the economics and operating model of orbital launch. Starlink uses a large constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to provide internet connectivity, including to remote areas. Through Tesla, Musk helped accelerate the mass-market adoption of high-performance electric vehicles and popularise cars as increasingly software-driven platforms. Tesla's Powerwall and Megapack have extended the company's technological footprint into residential and utility-scale energy storage. The world over, things previously considered extraordinarily difficult are moving from laboratories into practical use. Autonomous vehicles offer one example. Driverless services now operate in some cities, although the technology remains geographically restricted and far from universally deployed. Musk's own predictions about fully autonomous Teslas have repeatedly slipped, reminding us that technological ambition must be distinguished from technological readiness. The message for Nigeria is that the world is moving ahead and will leave developmentally stagnant countries behind. Nigeria remains preoccupied with existential problems and power play among the political class. Yet the country needs to use state power to transform society through science. The real lesson from Neuralink is therefore beyond Elon Musk. Blindsight exists within an ecosystem of universities, laboratories, venture capital, sophisticated manufacturing, regulators, specialist hospitals, engineers and neuroscientists. Innovation of this complexity is not produced by inspirational speeches alone. It is produced by systems. Nigerians do not need to remain perpetual users of other people's ideas. Nigeria has too often consumed technologies without building domestic capacity to design, manufacture, improve and export them. Nor must Nigeria begin by attempting brain implants or reusable rockets. Industrial capability is cumulative. Countries acquire sophisticated technological capacity by developing engineers, suppliers, laboratories, manufacturing processes, intellectual property and markets over time. Nigeria's automobile industry offers a useful example. The Federal Government has adopted a Nigeria First policy intended to give preference to locally manufactured and assembled vehicles in public procurement. The relevant question is whether government will actually enforce it. Will presidents, governors, ministers, legislators and government agencies lead by example? More importantly, will local production progress beyond assembly towards greater Nigerian value addition in components, electronics, software, engineering and intellectual property? Toyota itself did not emerge fully formed as a global automotive giant. Its automobile development began in the 1930s, and Toyota Motor Company was established in 1937. Decades of engineering, manufacturing discipline and continuous improvement followed. Industrial greatness is built rather than wished into existence. What, then, is Nigeria's place in the evolving world? UNESCO's 2026 R&D data release reports that Sub-Saharan Africa spends only about 0.38 per cent of GDP on research and development, compared with 2.55 per cent in Europe and Northern America and 2.42 per cent in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia. Nigeria cannot seriously aspire to technological sovereignty while science remains peripheral to national development strategy. What is Nigeria doing about its staggering brain drain, with its best talents celebrated for building foreign institutions while the home front wastes away? What conditions are scientists and engineers at home being given to create? How does Nigeria intend to cope with a post-oil era increasingly defined by science and technology? These are not idle questions. The lesson from Blindsight is not that Nigeria needs its own Elon Musk. Nigeria needs an innovation system capable of producing thousands of ambitious scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, and institutions capable of turning their ideas into technologies, industries and national prosperity. WATCH TOP VIDEOS FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE TV

Image created with nano banana by Joseph Olejak using the prompts "human divine evolution" Ever since the dawn of the computer age there has been a technological movement to advance the idea that one day artificial intelligence will be smarter than humans and by definition two things will likely emerge in that dystopian future: 1. Humans will have to merge with computers to remain a viable species 2. Technocracy (as opposed to Democracy) will be the political framework. I call this future dystopian because it is a future without love, compassion and feeling. It is a future based on zeros and ones and is a cold hearted rational approach. For example, computers may determine one day that there are too many humans to safely inhabit the planet. Or that humans are a parasite on planet Earth. The logical conclusion of that is extermination. One could easily imagine an extermination plan - Old Chatham Quakers has witnessed it before with industrial scale, but now try to grok what it would look like under technocracy. And carried out by robots where there is no appeal to humanity. Too crazy? Outrageous? Not really. Computer targeting "solutions" without a human in the loop are already a part of Pentagon protocols. A girls school with 180 souls was bombed in Iran as part of Trump trying to control Iran. Oops? Not its fault. The computer made the decision. Hegseth, head of the so-called Dept of War, declared that there will be no limits on what the pentagon can do with AI. Like it or not Old Chatham Quakers is now in a technological race with machines for its very survival. Futurists debate whether there will be a split between mandatory fusion with machines or merely biological upgrades... OR... whether "regular" humans will become obsolescent. There's three lousy choices. FYI Neuralink, an American tech company, is already working on a brain-chip interface. Old Chatham Quakers is in a very dangerous place. Ray Kurzweil, in his book The Singularity Is Nearer, predicts that by 2030 brain-computer interfaces will allow people to plug their neocortex directly into the cloud. A terrifying thought. Who knows what computer bug might get uploaded into your brain. That virus won't be DNA or RNA but a source code chosen by someone else and it could have you thinking thoughts that are not your own and acting on ideas planted there by Meta or Musk or Gates or ABC. If you thought FOX NEWS was programming people this is on a whole other level. So what is the REAL Singularity? As a Christ-Based Quaker, I'd say that singularity has to do with its ability to merge with the spirit of Christ. If you find that language offensive or can't relate, just put in the Spirit of love. Either way it relates to a merger of a different kind and has these characteristics: 1. It is based on freedom 2. It is based on love 3. It is based on connection with and feeling for other humans 4. It puts logic second and humanity first 5. It creates space for diversity of thought and diversity of action. The real singularity grows out of quiet, discernment and connection to both spirit and each other. It is based on that intangible spiritual nature of humanity. The part that so many of Old Chatham Quakers are disconnected from. The odd thing is that it is so easy to connect. No special techniques required. The spirit of creation, of God, is all around Old Chatham Quakers and imbues the living world with fantastic creativity. O pen your eyes. O ne only has to look! Observation is the fastest way to God. Goethe, for example, did not view God and Nature as two separate entities. He fused the terms Gott-natur (God and Nature) to describe this singularity. And... are Old Chatham Quakers not nature? Not a part of it, but nature itself; that is fully integrated and a part of the whole? This sacred wholeness is what Goethe called the "garment of God" or the direct expression of the living God. Where does sacred observation lead? · To wholeness vs separation · To integration vs. fragmentation · To abundance and bounty vs scarcity I woke up this morning and saw a gaggle of turkeys with their little pullets in tow walking across the lawn and then they came upon two rabbits also having their breakfast of clover and no one ran - there was enough of everything for everyone. This is the thinking Old Chatham Quakers must adopt to survive because the AI models are based on limitation and not-enough. Human-Christ Singularity / Human-Love Singularity offers so much more. Take a look around!!! ~ Joseph Olejak