The feasibility of redesigning the human condition (such as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet Earth) will be the focus at Humanity + Summit, Dec. 5-6 in Irvine, California at EON Reality’s new state-of-the-art, 18,500-square-foot facility, built to showcase 3D visual content management and virtual reality applications.

Is Hollywood reflecting a transhuman turn in popular culture, helping us imagine a day when magical and muggle can live together in a peaceful Star Trek federation? Will the merging of pop culture, social networking and virtual reality into a heightened augmented reality encourage us all to make our lives a form of participative fiction?

Those are among the issues to be discussed by transhumanists, futurists, culture critics, artists, writers, and filmmakers to explore the biopolitics that are implicit in depictions of emerging technology in literature, film and television at Biopolitics of Popular Culture Seminar, December 4, 2009, preceding Humanity + Summit at the same location.