@Ellen North

Makes me wonder if this is intended to reassure those conned into investing into schemes presenting the transference of identifiable personality characteristics into machines as 'selling immortality' to the very wealthiest?

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-07/billionaires-russian-mogul...

Technology
Billionaires: Russian Mogul Wants to Upload Your Brains Into Immortality
By Clay Dillow July 19, 2012

Earlier this year, a Russian media mogul named Dmitry Itskov formally announced his intention to disembody our conscious minds and upload them to a hologram--an avatar--by 2045. In other words he outlined a plan to achieve immortality, removing the human mind from the physical constraints presented by the biological human body. He was serious. And now, in a letter to the members of the Forbes World's Billionaire's List, he's offering up that immortality to the world's 1,266 richest people.

"Many of you who have accumulated great wealth by making success of your businesses are supporting science, the arts and charities. I urge you to take note of the vital importance of funding scientific development in the field of cybernetic immortality and the artificial body," Itskov wrote in the letter. "Such research has the potential to free you, as well as the majority of all people on our planet, from disease, old age and even death." ...

... The idea, as you can see above, is to incrementally move the human mind into more disembodied and--no better way to say it--futuristic vehicles: first a humanoid robot controlled entirely by a human brain via brain-machine interface, then a conscious human brain transplanted into a humanoid robot, then consciousness uploaded (sans biological gray matter) to a computer, and finally a hologram that contains a full conscious human mind. ...

Lol, he actually plans to be transferring consciousness - as a separate entity from the brain - to robots by 2035, less than 20 years from now.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-would-you-like-to-invest-in-immortality

How would you like to invest in immortality?
March 22, 2013

... A new corporate entity that the Russian multi-millionaire will formally announce at an event in June will allow investors to bankroll research into neuroscience and human consciousness with the ultimate goal of transferring human minds into robots, extending human life indefinitely. Early investors will be first in line for the technology when it matures, something Itskov believes will happen in the 2040s.

Itskov outlined a rough roadmap for the future of his 2045 Initiative, a multi-decade research and development push to understand human consciousness and ultimately how to transfer it from human bodies into robotic avatars:

By 2020 scientists will figure out how to control robots via brain-machine interfaces (read: mind control).
By 2025 the goal is to place a human brain into a working robot and have that person’s consciousness (memories, personality, and everything else that makes up the “self”) transfer along with it.
By 2035, create robots with artificial brains to which human consciousness can be uploaded.

Itskov sees the 2045 Initiative as an engine for technological and economic development, one that will drive discovery in neuroscience, robotics, artificial intelligence — even spirituality.

The following is far more wide-ranging without the robotic/virtual reality emphasis and includes a theory that this sort of life-extending technology will be applied to us all, and how can the world support us all? (Hint, it couldn't, even if it wasn't already being killed off by the Greeds who apparently wish to 'live forever' in an unliving state in the hell-on-Earth they're creating, without needing any of the requirements or pleasures of life they're so eagerly destroying in the search for endless profit before life itself ends from this.

But that's OK, because 'machines do everything better' and who needs life to 'live forever' as a programmed robot zombie even after your body dies with you still in there going 'WTF?' without ever getting your money back?

These billionaires would fall into the category of those credulous public officials falling for phishing schemes they've been warned about, because no matter how reality-deprived/ignoring they are, somehow, nothing bad can ever happen to them as a result of their own actions!

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/03/13/silicon-valley-trying-make-humans-imm...

Tech & Science
Silicon Valley Is Trying to Make Humans Immortal—and Finding Some Success
By Betsy Isaacson On 3/5/15

Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, plans to live to be 120. Compared with some other tech billionaires, he doesn’t seem particularly ambitious. Dmitry Itskov, the “godfather” of the Russian Internet, says his goal is to live to 10,000; Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, finds the notion of accepting mortality “incomprehensible,” and Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, hopes to someday “cure death.” ...

... But historical precedent hasn’t dissuaded some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. Thiel, for example, has given $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation. ...

... But SENS, which has an annual operating budget of $5 million, is puny compared with the Brin-led Project Calico, Google’s attempt to “cure death,” which is planning to pump billions into a partnership with pharmaceutical giant AbbVie. Google is notoriously secretive, but it’s rumored to be building a drug to mimic foxo3, a gene associated with exceptional life span.

Then there’s the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the granddaddy of modern antiaging initiatives, started by venture capitalist Paul F. Glenn in 1965. ...

... The Glenn Foundation also works closely with the Ellison Medical Foundation, a far younger institution (founded in 1997). ...

... In 1956, gerontologist Clive M. McCay performed a somewhat ghoulish experiment on the rural upstate New York campus of Cornell University: He sewed the flanks of live mice together in order to link their bloodstreams. In the pairings McCay stitched together, one mouse was spritely, healthy and young; the other was old and in relatively bad shape. With their bloodstreams linked, the old mouse seemed to age in reverse, getting healthier and younger as the experiment continued. The young mouse, meanwhile, aged prematurely. ...

... Fast-forward 48 years to 2004. Amy Wagers, at Harvard University’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, repeated McCay's flank-stitching experiments to see if she could reproduce his results. And it worked. So Wagers—in part funded by Glenn and Ellison—decided to try to isolate individual proteins in the mouse blood to see what was causing the ghoulish effect. ...

... Injecting young blood, with its high levels of GDF11, into old mice seemed to restart those dormant stem cells, causing the old mice to "age in reverse" as they produced the healthy, vital tissues associated with youth. ...

But it always comes back to this:

http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/invest-in-immortalitybillionaire...

Brains in robots plan for immortality
August 3, 2012

A RUSSIAN billionaire has a plan to make himself, and others, live forever.

Dmitry Itskov, a 31-year-old media mogul, implored other magnates to fund cybernetic immortality and the artificial body - basically transferring human consciousness into a robot body.

In open letter to the Forbes richest list he wrote, "Currently you invest in business projects that will bring you yet another billion."

"You also have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilisation has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it's not a science fiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime." ...

And these billionaires funding these to-be-programmed 'immortal' (while never living) robots must be reassured that these robots with their very own personality characteristics will be accepted as 'human', and what better way than to announce that they'll be able to legally marry lesser humans and continue making dynastic marriages and maybe even mechanically go through the motions of having sex?

Wait until the moment comes when they realize that they remain in their own bodies once the copy has been transferred, or confusedly come to understand that their brains are part of biological systems having highly complex needs supplied by biological systems which are unlikely to be adequately supplied by inorganic systems. Unless perhaps they're planning on keeping spare humans as 'blood-cattle' for continual draining? But what about hormones, enzymes, a whole not-understood interaction involving cellular signalling, automatically supplied by a healthy biological system?

Lately, we have been hearing about head transplants, which actually does strike me as possible, if risky.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3050417/Dr-Frankenstein-Sergio-C...

Self-proclaimed Dr Frankenstein boasts that he can do first human head transplant in under AN HOUR and admits his final goal is immortality

Surgeon Sergio Canavero sees 'no problem' with wealthy tycoons using the procedure to get a young body in their quest for eternal life
Hopes his first patient will be Russian with genetic muscle wasting disease
Valery Spiridonov, 30, has volunteered to be a guinea pig, despite the risks
Dr Canavero has been called 'nuts' by critics who think his plans a fantasy

By Will Stewart In Moscow for MailOnline

Published: 17:14 GMT, 22 April 2015 | Updated: 22:06 GMT, 22 April 2015

... But critics say Dr Canavero's plans are a fantasy. Arthur Caplan, the director of medical ethics at New York University's Langone Medical Centre, has described Dr Canavero as 'nuts'.

And Dr Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons, has said: 'I would not wish this on anyone. I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death.'

Nevertheless severely disabled Valery Spiridonov, 30, a sufferer of Werdnig-Hoffman disease, has volunteered to be a guinea pig, knowing the risks. ...

... 'I need $15 million. It's the price for happiness and health for a lot of people. But sponsors prefer spending money on healthy boneheads who can't kick a ball.'

Asked if such surgery could be used for 'elderly billionaires to get a young body', he claimed he had interest from tycoons seeking to extend their lives.

'You bet - there are a few funds working on prolonging life expectancy, and they are well-funded.

'These people came to me and said, "here is the money, but we want our participation to stay secret". ...

... 'When Bill Gates or Dmitry Itskov (a Russian millionaire supporting the research in artificial intelligence) fund my project, I'll come to the cameras with the receipt and say, "this person supported my initiative".' ...

... Dr Canavero, who currently undertakes experimental surgery near Turin, said that he had had 'many' offers to be his guinea pig in such surgery.

'My secretary receives queries from all over the world,' he said.

'I won't disclose the names of other candidates because they have not allowed me to do so. ...

But where will they find healthy plebe bodies to use for this in a greed-doomed and dying world with no regulation, no safe food, air or water, no safe workplaces or products, no medical care for (edit: most non-multi-millionaire/billionaire people)? Will they keep isolated reserve populations of humans in safer conditions for future head transplants, or count on some of their ilk going bankrupt and having to sell off some of their healthy children/grandchildren now and then, to use for this purpose? Probably the latter, since the oxygen supply goes with the global natural life support system consisting of life and other now-greed-failing natural processes, such as oceanic currents slowing down along with the drastic global atmospheric moisture/airflow and temperature/weather disruptions.

Obama was to go to Silicone Valley to act as a hedge fund manager in order to join his interests in science and technology, (and to make enough money during the looting phase of murdered society and Earth life to buy into 'immortality'?) this apparently/potentially delayed, at least in part, to keep tabs on Trump, the wild card.

http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/obama-the-vc.html

Silicon Valley VCs to President Obama: We're Hiring
The president hints at a future in Silicon Valley after he leaves the White House.
By Jessica Stillman
Contributor, Inc.com

... "Had I not gone into politics, I'd probably be starting some kind of business," the president mused in the interview. "The skill set of starting my presidential campaigns--and building the kinds of teams that we did and marketing ideas--I think would be the same kinds of skills that I would enjoy exercising in the private sector."

"The conversations I have with Silicon Valley and with venture capital pull together my interests in science and organization in a way I find really satisfying," he added, elaborating:

"You think about something like precision medicine: the work we've done to try to build off of breakthroughs in the human genome; the fact that now you can have your personal genome mapped for a thousand bucks instead of $100,000; and the potential for us to identify what your tendencies are, and to sculpt medicines that are uniquely effective for you. That's just an example of something I can sit and listen and talk to folks for hours about."
Would he be any good at the gig?

So, how would a former politician do in Silicon Valley? According to Quartz, other VC's are pretty optimistic about the idea. After all, there's precedent for making such a move successfully. "Former secretary of defense Colin Powell joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers in 2005, followed by former vice president Al Gore in 2007. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state under George W. Bush, teamed up with Khosla Ventures in 2012," the publication's Michael J. Coren points out. ...

Below is a relatively small selection from an enormous and must-read article, if it's possible to read this at source.

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationshi...

.

.. The Intercept teamed up with Campaign for Accountability to present two revealing data sets from that forthcoming project: one on the number of White House meetings attended by Google representatives, and the second on the revolving door between Google and the government.

As the interactive charts accompanying this article show, Google representatives attended White House meetings more than once a week, on average, from the beginning of Obama’s presidency through October 2015. Nearly 250 people have shuttled from government service to Google employment or vice versa over the course of his administration.

No other public company approaches this degree of intimacy with government. According to an analysis of White House data, the Google lobbyist with the most White House visits, Johanna Shelton, visited 128 times, far more often than lead representatives of the other top-lobbying companies — and more than twice as often, for instance, as Microsoft’s Fred Humphries or Comcast’s David Cohen. (The accompanying chart reflects 94 Shelton visits; it excludes large gatherings such as state dinners and White House tours.)

The information, Weismann said, “will help the public learn more about the company’s influence on our government, our policies, and our lives.”

Asked to respond, Google spokesperson Riva Litman referred The Intercept to a blog post written when the Wall Street Journal raised similar questions a year ago. In that post, Google said the meetings covered a host of topics, including patent reform, STEM education, internet censorship, cloud computing, trade and investment, and smart contact lenses. The company also claimed to have counted similar numbers of visits to the White House by Microsoft and Comcast — but it did not explain its methodology for parsing the data.

Google’s dramatic rise as a lobbying force has not gone unnoticed. The company paid almost no attention to the Washington influence game prior to 2007, but ramped up steeply thereafter. It spent $16.7 million in lobbying in 2015, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and has been at or near the top of public companies in lobbying expenses since 2012.

But direct expenditures on lobbying represent only one part of the larger influence-peddling game. Google’s lobbying strategy also includes throwing lavish D.C. parties; making grants to trade groups, advocacy organizations, and think tanks; offering free services and training to campaigns, congressional offices, and journalists; and using academics as validators for the company’s public policy positions. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, was an enthusiastic supporter of both of Obama’s presidential campaigns and has been a major Democratic donor.

For its part, the Obama administration — attempting to project a brand of innovative, post-partisan problem-solving of issues that have bedeviled government for decades — has welcomed and even come to depend upon its association with one of America’s largest tech companies. ...

... Between January 2009 and October 2015, Google staffers gathered at the White House on 427 separate occasions. All told, 182 White House employees and 169 Google employees attended the meetings, with participation from almost every domestic policy and national security player in the West Wing.

The frequency of the meetings has increased practically every year, from 32 in 2009 to 97 in 2014. In the first 10 months of 2015, which is as far as the study goes, there were 85 Google meetings.

The most frequent visitor is Johanna Shelton, one of Google’s top lobbyists in Washington — officially its director of public policy. Shelton attended meetings at the White House on 94 different occasions.

The most Google-visited White House official is Todd Park, the U.S. chief technology officer from 2012 to 2014. In that short period, Park met with Google officials at the White House 22 times. Park’s replacement, current Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, was a former Google vice president. She had five White House meetings as a Google representative, then 10 Google meetings as a White House representative. ...

... Even Jill Biden and Michelle Obama have taken meetings with Google employees. ...

... The “revolving door” data, displayed in the above visualization, reveals 55 cases of individuals moving from positions at Google into the federal government, and 197 individuals moving from positions inside the government to jobs at Google. The data includes positions at firms that Eric Schmidt owns or controls — Civis Analytics, The Groundwork, and Tomorrow Ventures — along with two law firms and three lobbying firms that have represented Google. On the government side, staffers at Obama for America and a handful of other political campaigns were included. ...

... The data includes individuals from Google appointed to government boards while maintaining their positions at the tech firm. Google board member John Doerr was appointed to the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in February 2011. Eric Schmidt has been part of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology since 2009. He was also more recently appointed to lead the Defense Innovation Advisory Board at the Pentagon, which occurred outside the time frame of the data.

But the bulk of the moves involved job changes. Google alums work in the departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Education, Justice, and Veterans Affairs. One works at the Federal Reserve, another at the U.S. Agency for International Development. The highest number — 29 — moved from Google into the White House. The State Department had the next highest with just five. The moves from Google to government got more frequent in the later Obama years; 11 occurred in 2014 and 16 in 2015, after only 18 in the entire first term. ...

... The government and Google shared engineers, lawyers, scientists, communications specialists, executives, and even board members. Google has achieved a kind of vertical integration with the government: a true public-private partnership. ...

I've gone through my monthly allotment of articles here but - how much might this have to do with the planned dumping of Trump?

Silicon Valley Chiefs Notably Absent From Trump's Cabinet of Business ...
... Wall Street is in. Silicon Valley is out. ... (the former Goldman Sachs partner and hedge fund ... was an enthusiastic supporter of both Mr. Obama and ...
[Search domain www.nytimes.com] https://nytimes.com/2016/12/02/business/dealbook/silicon-vall

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/business/dealbook/silicon-valley-chie...

http://www.ethiogrio.com/news/world-news/29943-how-obama-hollywood-and-s...

How Obama, Hollywood and Silicon Valley are joining forces to fund his library

Posted By: Jasmine Wright

17/08/2015

Obama has been meeting with high-profile people like Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg to map out his post-presidential plans
His library will cost $1 billion, double what George W. Bush raised
He wants to use technology to better tell the narrative of his legacy

By Kiri Blakeley For Dailymail.com

Published: 04:44 GMT, 17 August 2015 | Updated: 06:22 GMT, 17 August 2015

... The Times says that Obama hopes to raise $1 billion to fund his library and endowment - double what George W. Bush raised.

Obama recently held a dinner at the White House with guests including luminaries such as Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire, writer Malcolm Gladwell, actress Eva Longoria, novelist Toni Morrison, hedge fund manager Marc Lasry, Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, and Sun Microsystems cofounder Vinod Khosla.

The topic? What Obama will do after he leaves office - a topic that he apparently finds 'nourishing.' ...

With High-Profile Help, Obama Plots Life After Presidency
... the hedge fund manager Marc Lasry and the Silicon Valley venture ... attention on Mr. Obama's future and to ensure ... this job completely ...
[Search domain www.nytimes.com] https://nytimes.com/2015/08/17/us/politics/with-high-profile-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/us/politics/with-high-profile-help-ob...

Edit to delete a note made in error.