Giulio Prisco on the Singularity: The End Is Not The End

Giulio Prisco is an Italian information technology virtual reality consultant, as well as a writer, futurist, and transhumanist. Formerly a senior manager in the European Space Agency, Prisco is a physicist and computer scientist who started his career at CERN. Giulio is an avid advocate of cryonics. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation and a founding member of the Order of Cosmic Engineers, and the Turing Church, fledgling organizations which claim that the benefits of the technological singularity would be viable alternatives to the promises of major religious groups. Given Prisco’s biography, when Catarina (Kryonica) suggested that I invite Giulio on Singularity 1 on 1, I was very happy to oblige. During our conversation we cover a wide variety of topics such as: how Giulio got interested in transhumanism and the singularity; the inspirational role of science fiction in general and Arthur C. Clarke in particular; the many definitions of the technological singularity; transhumanism and why he is a singularitiarian who doesn’t believe in the singularity; happiness as the ultimate motivation; religion, spirituality, unreligion and science; the Order of Cosmic Engineers; The Turing Church; hope and resurrecting the dead. My favorite quote that I will take away from this interview with Giulio Prisco is: “The end is not the end. Future science and technology may be able to resurrect us.”