So I've been reading on this. It's fun and all, but I'm now looking for some good criticisms. The half-manifesto was fun, but there were as many holes and digressions as in the Kurzweil et al. books.

Suggestions?

Is this like post-humanism? I'm not familiar with these terms. But I'm quite interested in the idea of the post-human.

You might want to take a look at Avital Ronell's writings esp. The Telephone Book - Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Telephone-Boo ... 0803289383

Just did a quick read on transhumanism, and yup - this is the stuff that I love thinking about. I haven't read any real-life, "practical" applications/theory - though I did just add several books to my Goodreads list. But no, I don't have any suggestions for critiques.
Sci-fi that touches on these topics is some of my favorite stuff to read. For someone who doesn't even have a cell phone I'm very excited about the idea and process of becoming post-human.

If you mean the "next level of humanity", trans-human and post-human are often interchangeable. Sometimes simply called h+.

Thanks for the tip Connell. The book seems sort of old to be about what's happening now though...

Yeah, I just picked up on the h+ shorthand. And was reminded that I had heard the term transhuman - it's the process that could lead to posthumanity.
And I saw this on a blog I follow:
http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681426/whe ... omputing#1

I haven't seen it myself, but you might want to check out the documentary Cyborg America, about the underground movement to combine technology into our (their) bodies.

More on it here.

Also, in terms of fiction, I just started The Postmortal by Drew Magary. Interesting premise along these lines, and a good read so far.

Just added it to my reading list! Thanks!
Last year I went to listen to Michio Kaku talk about developing technologies, and he thought it was within grasp to "cure aging" within the next 100 years.
I've been meaning to ask one of the neurologists I work with how feasible it would be, and what it would take, to keep our brains alive outside of our bodies. Not having a science background myself, it seems like it ought to be do-able. Once that's done, and the brain is networked to hardware, so many possibilities open up. Teleportation!

This is exactly why I want the singularity to come soon: I've been so busy with the kids that I seem to either fall asleep with them at 8:30pm or to be too tired to be bothered with writing here...

I'm half joking, but then again this is what most singularity proponents are accused of: geeky wishful thinking. This said, that's one of my reasons for looking for a counter-argument. Every single one I've found up to now doesn't say it won't come. They just say it will come later (100-150 years) than what Kruzweilians say (50 years?). Do you all realize that our kids or grand-kids may never die? And if not, their grand-kids probably won't? Mind-blowing.

I say I haven't seen a counter-argument, but a friend of mine who works in environment had a good one: we're so close to the brink of ecological catastrophe that there's a good chance global warming and its more destructive effects will push human civilization so close to the brink it won't have the resources to pursue research in advanced ai, nano-technology, etc.

Oh, if you have the science background for it (I don't think I do ), edX (Berkeley) is offering a free online course in AI in September (https://www.edx.org/courses/BerkeleyX/C ... Fall/about).

If you're interested in reading more:
-The Singularity is Near presents an enthusiastic argument pro-Singularity: http://singularity.com/
-One Half a Manifesto presents a counter-argument, basically saying the underlying systems are too flawed for the level of AI required by singularity to be reached (any time soon anyway). He also makes an ethical/economic argument that's not as convincing: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/ ... index.html
-h+ Magazine has some interesting articles, but it also manages to make the whole thing look like a cult. http://hplusmagazine.com/