http://www.futuresalon.org/2008/04/neuroengineerin.html

Future Salon - The InnerSpace Foundation and The IF Prize: Why and How We Should Transcend Our Evolved Limitations

Date and Time: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM Local Time (1:00 AM - 4:00 AM UTC)

Location: SAP Labs North America - 3410 Hillview Avenue, Bldg. D, Southern Cross, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA | Google Maps

Description:

Facebook listing.

Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation followed by discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross or Cafeteria depending on number of RSVPs. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304. Free and open to the public. Spread the word and please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/6oxlzr

Speaker:

Dr. Pete Estep will discuss the InnerSpace Foundation (IF), a new nonprofit being developed to promote and support neuroengineering approaches for the enhancement of memory and learning - biomedical goals that have the potential to improve not only the lives of those suffering from a specific malady, but everyone's life.

Estep earned his Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard Medical School, performing research in the lab of genomics pioneer Dr. George Church. He is an inventor of several technologies, including universal DNA protein-binding microarrays (PBMs). He serves as an advisor to the Personal Genome Project, an open source project at Harvard Medical School.

Abstract:

Biological evolution is a somewhat haphazard and non-optimizing process that has produced many undesirable artifacts. Among a large number and wide variety of such artifacts, two stand out as the underlying causes of the most pervasive and extreme human suffering: mental and lifespan limitations. Mental inabilities are universal, and they must ultimately serve to explain our ongoing failures to end human warfare, crime, poverty, and famine, and to completely cure diseases, disabilities, aging and death; therefore, these inabilities are fundamentally even more harmful to humanity than the categories of biomedical dysfunction we currently labor to cure. The overall goal of the InnerSpace Foundation (IF) is to accelerate the development of biomedical technologies for transcending these limitations. IF Chairman Dr. Pete Estep will outline specific steps the foundation is taking toward dramatic enhancement of memory, learning and cognition, and will describe how these near-term goals should ultimately help us to eliminate or transcend other unwanted artifacts of Darwinian evolution.