Phil Bowermaster talks about emerging technologies that put the power of production into the hands of each of us, and how far those technologies may take us.

It's been called the "poor man's TED," although it describes itself as "an ad-hoc participant powered unconference."

It is the BIL conference; the most recent one occurred March 5-6 on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA. A panel of four BIL insiders join us to discuss the conference:

Simone Syed

Alexis Bright

Cody Marx Bailey

Reichart Von Wolfsheild

Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon welcome Tyler Emerson and PJ Manney to discuss the World Transhumanist Society. Originally aired January 27 2008.

Original description:

This show was a transhumanist round table with Tyler Emerson, PJ Manney, Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon. What is a transhumanist? What do they hope to accomplish? What are the risks?

In an expanded edition of the World Transformed 1.5, Phil Bowermaster talks about the next steps humanity will likely take in transforming the world. What is the ultimate destiny of humanity?

Futurists Alvis Brigis and Vanessa Meimis join Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon to discuss the Future of Facebook. Is Facebook destined to be the next Google or the next AOL?

PLUS -- The scoop on Open Foresight.

About our guests

Alvis Brigis is writer, video producer and social media entrepreneur focused on the human side of accelerating change.  He's worked extensively in reality and documentary television, co-founded future portal MemeBox.com and serves on the board of the Acceleration Studies Foundation.  Alvis blogs about the presnet day "human creativity explosion", which he sees as an autocatalytic component of broader acceleration, and near-term social change at socialnode.com.

Venessa Miemis is a futurist and digital ethnographer, researching what is happening at the intersection of technology, communication, and culture and how we're impacted as a society, and what that means for the future. She has recently completed a Masters in Media Studies at the New School in NYC.

In this show from January 20, 2008, Stephen Gordon and Michael Darling discuss technologies from Star Trek that have shown up or are likely to show up in real life.

THIS WEEK ONLY -- World Transformed 1.5 on Sunday Evening

Phil Bowermaster continues working through the major topics of the World Transformed. This week, arguably the greatest transformation of them all -- the emergence of greater-than-human intelligence and the (literally) unimaginable future that follows.

Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon discuss the new documentary about Ray Kurzweil -- Transcendent Man -- with filmmaker Barry Ptolemy. Futurists PJ Manney and Natasha Vita-More also join the discussion.

About our guest:

At age 12, Barry Ptolemy was first inspired to create films by Steven Spielberg on the set of E.T., The Extra Terrestrial, where he worked and studied closely alongside the director for the duration of the production. After attending USC film school, Barry went on to direct and produce dozens of award-winning commercials and films. In 2006, his interest in the sciences led him to read Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, upon which his first feature, Transcendent Man, is based. He also recently directed the commercial "We Are The World 25 For Haiti" with Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones, which aired during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Opening Ceremonies. Barry was recently hailed as one of the new "power directors" by Los Angeles Confidential Magazine. He lives in Southern California with his wife and their two children.

First aired January 13, 2008, this show includes a grab-bag of future-related topics, with an emphasis on energy and transportation.

Phil Bowermaster continues to explore the major transformations occurring in our world -- this week focusing on how things might go wrong, and how wrong they might go.