TECH×MEAT

// Reference

Glossary

36 terms from AGI to wetware, concisely explained, continuously expanded, and cross-linked.

A

AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)
Artificial intelligence that handles virtually every cognitive task at least at human level: not a specialist in one domain, but a universal thinker. The heads of leading AI labs expect AGI between a few years from now and around 2030, while broad researcher surveys spread much wider. AGI is considered a turning point because it would accelerate research and engineering in every other field.More on this: AI & Singularity
Alignment
The research field working to ensure that AI systems pursue the goals and values of their users and society, even once they become more capable than their developers. Core problems: specifying goals precisely, predicting behavior in novel situations, and preventing a system from pursuing learned goals in unwanted ways. For the merger of human and machine, alignment is the safety foundation.More on this: AI & Singularity
ASI / Superintelligence
An intelligence that far surpasses the best human brains in practically every domain, scientific creativity, wisdom and social skills included. Nick Bostrom shaped today's debate with his book "Superintelligence" (2014). Whether the path from AGI to ASI takes years or only months (an intelligence explosion) is one of the field's most contested questions.More on this: AI & Singularity

B

Biohacking
The do-it-yourself approach to measuring and optimizing your own biology, from sleep tracking, nutrition protocols and cold exposure to supplements and implanted NFC chips. The spectrum runs from solidly evidenced interventions to pure pseudoscience, so serious biohacking documents, measures, and stays skeptical of miracle claims.More on this: Technologies
Blindsight
Neuralink's vision-prosthesis project: an implant in the visual cortex that translates camera images directly into neural stimulation, meant to give blind people a coarse field of vision, even when eyes and optic nerve are completely destroyed. Designated a "Breakthrough Device" by the FDA. The first generation will deliver pixel-like vision, not natural sight.More on this: Technologies
Brain-Computer Interface (BCI)
A direct communication link between brain and computer, bypassing muscles and speech. Invasive BCIs (Neuralink, Utah array) read individual neurons with implanted electrodes. Endovascular ones (Stentrode) reach the brain through blood vessels, and non-invasive ones (EEG headsets) measure through the skull. The trade-off: the higher the bandwidth, the more invasive the procedure.More on this: Technologies
BrainGate
The academic research consortium (including Brown, Stanford, Massachusetts General Hospital) that has been testing implanted brain-computer interfaces in clinical trials for over 20 years, since long before Neuralink. BrainGate patients were the first to control cursors, robotic arms and speech synthesis by thought. Much of the field's foundation comes from these studies.More on this: Technologies

C

Cellular reprogramming
Partially resetting aged cells to a younger state using the Yamanaka factors, the genes that can turn mature cells back into stem cells (Nobel Prize 2012). It is considered the hottest candidate for genuine rejuvenation, and companies like Altos Labs pursue it with billion-dollar budgets. Biggest hurdle: reprogramming without cancer risk.More on this: Transhumanism
Closed-loop implant
A neural implant that doesn't just read or stimulate but couples both: it detects an event beginning in the brain, such as an epileptic seizure, and intervenes automatically before the person notices anything. Such systems are approved and in use today, and they show the principle of the merge in its purest form: the machine acts faster than consciousness.More on this: Technologies
Cochlear implant
The most successful neuroprosthesis in history: an implant converts sound into electrical impulses and stimulates the auditory nerve directly. Over a million people worldwide hear with one. The cochlear implant was the first large-scale proof that a technical device can replace a human sense, making it the historical foundation of all sensory prostheses.More on this: Technologies
Cognitive liberty
The proposed fundamental right to self-determination over your own mind and brain: both the freedom to change your own mind (neuro-enhancement) and protection against others reading or manipulating it. As BCI bandwidth grows, cognitive liberty is turning from a philosophical concept into an urgent legislative question.More on this: Transhumanism
CRISPR
A molecular tool for cutting and rewriting DNA at precise locations, often described as "genetic scissors". In 2023, Casgevy became the first approved CRISPR therapy (for sickle cell disease). CRISPR makes the blueprint of life editable, and the line between curing disease and enhancing healthy people is the central ethical battleground.More on this: Technologies
Cryonics
The preservation of the deceased at around −196 °C in the hope that future medicine can repair and revive them. Scientifically highly contested: storage is feasible today, revival is pure speculation. Advocates frame it as a wager, since the alternative offers a success probability of exactly zero.More on this: Transhumanism
Cyborg
Short for "cybernetic organism": a being made of biological and technical components. By that definition, millions of people are already cyborgs, carrying pacemakers, artificial heart valves, cochlear implants or brain stimulators. The term loses its science-fiction ring at exactly the pace at which medicine makes it normal.More on this: Technologies

D

Deep brain stimulation (DBS)
An established procedure in which implanted electrodes stimulate specific brain regions, a "brain pacemaker". Well over a hundred thousand Parkinson's patients suppress their tremors with it at the push of a button, and DBS is also being studied for depression and OCD. It has shown for decades that electrical intervention in the brain can be safe and practical.More on this: Technologies

E

Enhancement
Any intervention that improves human capabilities beyond the healthy norm, as opposed to therapy, which compensates deficits. The line is blurry: is a memory prosthesis for dementia patients therapy, and the same technology in a healthy person enhancement? This distinction decides approval, insurance coverage and social acceptance, making it the legal battlefield of the coming decades.More on this: Transhumanism
Exocortex
A hypothetical external thinking organ: compute, memory and AI coupled to the brain through an interface so tightly that they feel like part of your own mind. Weak precursors already exist: a smartphone with an AI assistant is an exocortex with terrible bandwidth. The vision: remove the detour through eyes and thumbs.More on this: My Why
Extropianism
An early transhumanist current of the 1980s/90s around Max More: radically optimistic, market-liberal, and aimed at boundless growth of intelligence, lifespan and agency. The extropian mailing list was the big bang of the modern movement. Many of today's debates, from cryonics to superintelligence, were first held there.More on this: Transhumanism

L

Longevity escape velocity (LEV)
The hypothetical point at which medical progress extends remaining life expectancy by more than one year per year: you "escape" aging as long as research stays faster. Coined by Aubrey de Grey. Whether LEV is reachable in decades or never is open, but the mere possibility changes debates about health, retirement and life planning.More on this: Transhumanism

M

Mind uploading
The hypothetical transfer of a consciousness from the biological brain to another substrate, such as a computer. It presupposes that the mind is fully determined by the brain's structure and dynamics, and it raises transhumanism's hardest philosophical problem: would the copy be me, or just someone who believes they are?More on this: AI & Singularity
Morphological freedom
The proposed right to keep or change your own body according to your own wishes, from refusing any modification to radical enhancement. The core: both must be voluntary. A society that forces upgrades violates this right just as much as one that bans them.More on this: Transhumanism

N

Nanobots
Hypothetical molecular machines that could repair cells in the bloodstream, fight pathogens, or connect neurons to the cloud. Central to Ray Kurzweil's vision of the merge by 2045, and at the same time the element of his forecasts that lags furthest behind schedule. Today's "nanomedicine" works with nanoparticles, not programmable robots.More on this: AI & Singularity
Neurofeedback
A training method that makes your own brain activity (usually via EEG) visible in real time so you can learn to influence it deliberately. The non-invasive gateway drug of neurotechnology: no surgery, modest evidence, but a first taste of what it feels like when brain and machine work in a loop.More on this: Technologies
Neurorights
Proposed fundamental rights for the age of neurotechnology: mental privacy, protection of identity, protection from manipulation, and fair access to neuro-enhancement. In 2021, Chile became the first country in the world to write neurorights into its constitution, and UNESCO and other states are working on standards. The race: the rules must exist before mass adoption arrives.More on this: Transhumanism

P

Posthumanism
An umbrella term for schools of thought about a being beyond today's human. In the transhumanist sense: the state that enhancement could lead to in the long run, with capabilities so far beyond the present that the label "human" becomes questionable. Not to be confused with the critical posthumanism of the humanities, which questions the human as a category of thought.More on this: Transhumanism

S

Senolytics
Compounds that selectively clear senescent cells: aged "zombie cells" that no longer divide but emit inflammatory signals and damage surrounding tissue. In animal studies, senolytics extend the healthy lifespan, and human clinical trials are underway. One of the most concrete approaches in longevity research.More on this: Transhumanism
Stentrode
Synchron's implant: an electrode-covered stent threaded through the jugular vein into a blood vessel on the motor cortex, giving brain access without opening the skull. Lower signal quality than implanted threads, but a routine procedure. Patients have used it to control smartphones and an Apple Vision Pro.More on this: Technologies
Substrate independence
The thesis that consciousness does not depend on its biological carrier material but on the organization of information processing, and could therefore in principle exist on silicon. The base assumption behind mind uploading and digital immortality. Whether it is true is an open question in the philosophy of mind, not a settled fact.More on this: AI & Singularity
Super-longevity
The first of the three transhumanist pillars: radically extending the healthy lifespan. Not more frail years, but more healthy ones. The approach treats aging as a cascading, in-principle repairable damage process rather than fate. Tools: senolytics, cellular reprogramming, gene therapy, prevention.More on this: Transhumanism
Synchron
A neurotechnology company from New York and Neuralink's most important competitor, with the opposite philosophy: instead of maximum bandwidth through open-skull surgery, Synchron bets on minimal invasiveness. The Stentrode is implanted through blood vessels in a routine procedure. Synchron was the first modern-generation BCI company to achieve permanent implants in US patients.More on this: Technologies

T

Technological singularity
The hypothetical point at which AI improves itself and technological progress becomes so fast that human prediction fails. Vernor Vinge coined the term, Ray Kurzweil the date: around 2045, with human-level AI around 2029. Critics call it numerology and supporters call it conservative. The only serious statement is: nobody knows.More on this: AI & Singularity
Transhumanism
The philosophical and technological movement that sees today's human as a transitional stage and wants to overcome its limits of disease, aging, and cognitive capacity with science and technology. Term by Julian Huxley (1957), systematized by Max More (1990), given academic grounding by Nick Bostrom and the World Transhumanist Association (1998).More on this: Transhumanism

U

Utah array
The classic among brain electrodes: a few-millimeter silicon plate with 96 rigid needle electrodes, the workhorse of BCI research since the 2000s (including BrainGate). Almost everything known about thought-controlled cursors and robotic arms before Neuralink was measured with Utah arrays.More on this: Technologies

W

Wetware
Hacker slang for the biological side of the human system: brain, nervous system, body, named by analogy with hardware and software. The term carries the core transhumanist perspective: biology, too, is an information-processing system with interfaces, bugs, and a need for updates.More on this: My Why
Whole brain emulation (WBE)
The hypothetical complete simulation of an individual brain on a computer, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. The technically most concrete path to mind uploading, but far beyond today's capabilities: even fully mapping a fly's brain was a decades-long megaproject. WBE is the yardstick for how long the road really is.More on this: AI & Singularity