The Science Channel has come up with a new futurist series called "Futurescape" with actor James Woods as the host. It has physicist Michio Kaku for "legitimizing" backup. It also is peppered with sound bites from various "futurists," "biophysics ethicists," and other such "experts."

To sum it up, it is another one of those paranoid drivel TV shows designed to scare you. The opening episode about advancing technology in the field of Brain/Machine Interfaces seems designed to drive up the price of stock in the Tinfoil Hat industry.

Way back in 1946, Murray Leinster, writing under his real name of Will F. Jenkins, published a short story in the March issue of Astounding Science Fiction which was eeriliy prescient in its description of a computer network which believes that "information should be free" and takes that premise to disturbing extremes.

The story was "A Logic Named Joe," and Leinster wrote it at a time when computers were still vast and cumbersome contrivances used for breaking enemy codes and crunching numbers.

I’ve been thinking about the future and the singularity a lot lately. One issue that Kurzweil and other singularity intellectuals focus on is death. In The Futurist magazine Thomas Fey has published an article “When Death Becomes Optional: Rethinking the inevitable.”

“The year is 2032. You have just celebrated your 80th birthday and you have some tough decisions ahead. You can either keep repairing your current body or move into a new one.