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[ANTIcarrot]

In today's world, we have humans, and we have other animals. We also have a half dozen technologies and sciences that are likely to give us the ability to create 'real' anthropomorphics within our lifetime. (EG: The next 40 to 50 years.) At that point we can rely on the principle that there's nothing so stupid that humans won't do at least twice and you'll have a real live furry! Well, sort of. 90 minutes shoudl be enough to cover quite a bit of territory.

Relevant technologies (some of which overlap):
*Genetic engineering. The old stand in. Several variations. What will and will not work.
*Robots. In the 'terminator' sense; but with better programming.
*Advanced virtual reality. To the point where you can't tell the difference.
*Micro-architecture. Biological lego blocks.
*Body modification. Surgery.
*Synthetic biology. Biology with no evolutionary ancestry in the natural world.
*Artificial Intelligence. In the synthetic and biological sense.
*Molecular assembler technologies. If you want to be optimistic.

Last year we had a distinguished but elderly scientist say that some things about furries were impossible. He got some of it very probably wrong. This year, well... I'm an engineer. I solve practical problems...

Would anyone be interested in this?

[draconigen]

I'm an engineer. I solve practical problems...

I love you for this line.

Also, yes, I would totally love to have this topic present on EF!

[Pinky]

I think this would be massively interesting, although 90 minutes would probably be too long for little critters who want to chase butterflies in the sun to listen to it. Perhaps 45-60 minutes would be better, or divide it into a "everyone can understand this" section and a "you need some technical knowledge to understand this" section or something like that. Well this was just a suggstion anyway, the topic sounds majorly interesting.

[Ziggy_wolf]

Interesting topic indeed, though not verry plausable.
I imagine this would turn out like the movie Splice, wich is about the closest thing you get to this topic movie-wize anyhow.
Jolly good movie I say, scared the living daylights out of me.
I remember there was a mention in some newspaper or othert that there were scientists over in the UK, doing genetic experiments with human and animal embryos. An interesting debate for some might be the ethical ramifications concerning such recearch.
Though moraly questionable, I would be rather curious to see what would be possible. But I supose they would resemble somthing like my earlyest drawings, a horrible misformed abmomination begging to be put out of its missery.

On a side note, since the topic is kungfur hustle.
Why not try to get Stan Sakai the guy who draws Usagi Jujimbo as a guest, I seem to recal he attended Anthrocon once.
And why not set up Paws of fury at the gamecorner or whatnot?

[Pinky]

I don't think a neutral talk on the technology would be morally questionable. But I think ethics would be an interesting aspect to include in the talk.

Stan Sakai was our Guest of Honour last year and so won't be our guest this year. You're one year too late I'm afraid. But I'm sure we'll have someone interesting this year too. :-)

I don't know who's in charge of the games corner if there is one (I'm not really into games personally), but whoever it is, I suggest you talk to that person about it.

[ANTIcarrot]

I don't think a neutral talk on the technology would be morally questionable.

I would love to do a talk on the ethics of personhood in a society of two or more sapient species. However the two core questions of that issue are 'what is a person?' and 'what is not a person?'. That is politically messy, with entrenched interests in several places, and that's before you get translation problems.

The problem is that you can have strong beliefs about what is a person (in which case you run head first into Godwin's Law) or you judge by appearance (in which case you run head first into Godwin's Law) or you take a scientific stance and measure personhood (in which case you run head first into Godwin's Law). Plus there's the minor issue of sexual relations...

This is a SIG I'd be happy to host, but only after talking to Cheetah about it.

[ANTIcarrot]

Interesting topic indeed, though not verry plausable.
I imagine this would turn out like the movie Splice, wich is about the closest thing you get to this topic movie-wize anyhow.

Then you have a limited imagination. But by all means come along and I'll happily point out all the possibilities you're not considdering.

[Pinky]

Hmmm you're inspiring me to do a SIG myself actually. But more on the social details on this, I'm an anthropologist so I know nothing about biology, physics and chemistry - or genetics!

[Ziggy_wolf]

Interesting topic indeed, though not verry plausable.
I imagine this would turn out like the movie Splice, wich is about the closest thing you get to this topic movie-wize anyhow.

Then you have a limited imagination. But by all means come along and I'll happily point out all the possibilities you're not considdering.

Limited imagination my tail! I`ll have you know I`m the one who invented the mocrowave pizza cracker, and coind the therm motherfluffer, so there! You may insult my fat arse good sir, but not my imagination you floppy eared carrot wolloper!
Any how, most early atempts at genetic engenering usually had many previous failures before suceeding. As was the case with creating Dolly, the first cloned sheep, a feew years ago. Anyhow I think genetic engenering and creating real anthros is a great topic, maybe whe could get some experts on the feild? And what other options? maybe we can spread the topic out a little?

Anyhow "Stan Sakai was guest of honour last year!?" (Please excuse me while I cuss loudly)

Quick question: Are there any other discussion panels/ lectures comming up, I find theese quite interesting, and it gives us somthing else to do other than buy questionable items and consume vast quanteties of alchohol.
 

[Keidran]

I'd be very interested in that =D
But you have to build a dispenser too. Since you solve practical problems.