New online magazine edited by R.U. Sirius

Our friend R.U. Sirius is editing a new magazine called h+ and the first issue is available as a free PDF.

Humanity Plus (formerly the World Transhumanist Association) – in collaboration with former Mondo 2000 editor RU Sirius -- is pleased to present h+. A web-based quarterly magazine, h+ covers the scientific, technological, and cultural developments that are challenging and overcoming human limitations. 


Recently, there has been a growing and evolving public discourse about new technological trends and possibilities. Scientists and edge thinkers are talking about– and working on -- slowing or ending aging; body and brain enhancement; biological control of the genome and the evolutionary process; and the possibility of a technological singularity brought on by AI… to name just a few of the interests and obsessions of this new edge tech culture. h+ magazine is all over it.

Beautifully designed by virtual worlds artistic legend D.C. Spensley (AKA DanCoyote in Second Life), h+ is accessible, stylish, contemporary, and sometimes playful. h+ aims to provides an entry point for intelligent people to develop an awareness of this new technological paradigm, while also providing an outlet and a voice for those who are already hooked in to the "transhumanist" vision.

Featuring interviews with science fiction author Charlie Stross and anti-aging legend Aubrey de Grey, issue #1 of h+ magazine is now at hplusmagazine.com Editor R.U. Sirius promises to continue editing the periodical for "approximately 300 years."

h+ magazine

• [GeekDadCanada]

  Darn, I thought you mean Yahoo Serious. (And sorry for the three people who get that bad 80s reference).

• [buddy66]

  He’s going to edit it for approximately 300 years? Good. No hurry. I’ll read it a couple hundred years from now.

• [Modusoperandi]

  zuzu “Man, we just installed some guy’s replacement hand! Show some respect for meliorism.”
  Pbbt! Bill the Galactic Hero had an entire arm transplant, way back in 1965. There were a few bugs, however.

• [frankiez]

  Mondo 2008 ?!

• [Guesstimate Jones]

  Just the other day, I was wondering: “Whatever happened to R.U. Sirius?” I used to enjoy his podcasts…

• [andygates]

  Mmm, a PDF binding the reader to a paper-based wacky layout that you have to zoom around and can’t easily print ‘n’ stuff in a pocket OR screen-read (try it, go mad, ia, ia). The girl on the cover, with her Google contact lens (I want one) can’t read this zine comfortably.

  Semantic and physical data bound together? Transhuman fail. Flash the printers’ BIOS and try again…

  (It looks nice though, just Get It Right!)

• [holtt]

  Looking at what seems to be one of the subjects, I can’t help but think…

  “Hey buddy, you look shopped. I can tell from some of your pores.”

• [gorfulator]

  I took a quick glance at H+, looks like a bunch of smarties pondering future possibilities.
  I stopped looking forward to all these biotech enhancements about 1996, I’m getting old, give me a new brain. I’ll need a new hip in 20 years or so.
  Ugh, I was listening to Ray Kurzweil on NPR. He was going off on this great technology, just around the corner, of course. I don’t know, this all brings back all that dorky Virtual reality stuff from the early 90′s

  Somebody wake me when all this cool stuff is available at Fry’s.

• [holtt]

  It’s almost like religion. “My eyes are going bad at 45, but ahhh when singularity comes…”

• [zuzu]

  VR’s Achilles’ heel has always been the eyewear; miniaturization has yet to reach the sophistication of the way Neal Stephenson described goggles in Snow Crash.

  But at some point very powerful mobile phones and the hassle of netbooks / laptops will give way to mobile phones that have a DisplayPort-like jack that you can plug your glasses / goggles into — projecting a 1080p 60″ display directly on your retinas. Maybe Google will design the HUD for using real-time Google Maps on Android.

• [zuzu]

  It’s almost like religion. “My eyes are going bad at 45, but ahhh when singularity comes…”

  Man, we just installed some guy’s replacement hand! Show some respect for meliorism.

• [waugsqueke]

  They had me at the logo.

• [imipak]

  H-bar (” Ħ “) would have been a better choice.

• [zuzu]

  An encrypted / DRM’d PDF; that’s kinda dick. Even though most of the permissions are turned on. Otherwise, the content looks quite interesting.

• [MarlboroTestMonkey7]

  This sounds like “Pure H” the style mag in Jon Armstrong novel Grey and freely available here:
  http://www.nightshadebooks.com/downloads

  “…Then she introduced me to Pure H and everything changed again.
  Published every other month, the magazine is one-half meter square and printed on the most luscious and expensive paper made. It is a joy to touch and hold. But the most extraordinary
  thing about the magazine is that one anonymous person produces it. Although I’d heard speculation about who he might be, I preferred to enjoy his art without worrying about identity.
  He photographed every photo. He wrote all the copy. And each issue was a complex puzzle to be savored and deciphered…”

• [zuzu]

  We’re All Edge Cases
  with Cory Doctorow
  by RU Sirius

  DOCTOROW: Building a search engine that only contains the information that we’re mostly looking for is easy. But at that point, there’s no value. It’s pursuing the deviance, what Bruce Sterling called “Wooing the muse of the odd,” that actually creates a system that has a lot of perceived value. And that’s because we are all weird in some way. This is the most corrosive thing that happens to people who self-identify as science fiction fans… the idea that everyone else is mundane in science fiction argot… you’re either a mutant or you’re a “norm,” right? But norms are every bit as weird as any of us. It’s a matter of presentation and identity. We are all of us every bit as weird as any one of us.

  Resources
  http://www.emotiv.com/INDS_3/inds_3.html

• [firebus]

  @ZUZU (the first):

  not to mention ironic. humanity+ is technology-.

  what’s the point of a webzine that doesn’t accept comments? publishing is one of those industries (like banking and airlines) that got into technology early, and is now trapped by legacy code and legacy mindsets.

• [Jezrael]

  Aside from the cover, “virtual worlds artistic legend D.C. Spensley’s” design doesn’t seem that legendary.