(Photo: TED Blog)

What does Genesis frontman and prog rock god Peter Gabriel see when he looks in your eyes? The light, the heat and also an interspecies Internet capable of allowing highly intelligent animals to communicate with humans. Naturally.

Mr. Gabriel spoke on stage at TED last week alongside cognitive psychologist Diana Reiss, MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld and Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vincent Cerf. After spending time gazing into the eyes of animals and composing a song with a bonobo, Mr. Gabriel decided to team up with the trio in order to spread the word about the need for an interspecies Internet.

"Perhaps the most amazing tool man has created is the Internet," Mr. Gabriel said. "What would happen if we could somehow find new interfaces—visual, audio—to allow us to communicate with the remarkable beings we share the planet with?"

The group believes that animals can be incorporated into the Internet of things, allowing species like dolphins, apes and elephants to connect and communicate using the web. "These other sentient species should be part of the network too," Mr. Cerf said.

We all probably should've seen this coming from Mr. Gabriel, who's spent his career writing songs like "Animal Magic" and "Shock the Monkey."

(Photo: Blogspot)

Look, nobody expected Mississippi to be this shining bastion of liberalism, lovingly welcoming every transhumanist-animal-hybrid-Singulatarian to cross its borders. But unfortunately, in its quest to further criminalize and stigmatize abortion by explicitly defining personhood, Mississippi may have gone one step too far: House Bill 819, the Protection of the Human Person Act (PDF), would outlaw human-animal hybrids like animorphs, which should strike outrage in the heart of every '90s kid who loved the sci fi series.

The Clarion Ledger reports that the bill, introduced by Republican Senator William Tracy Arnold, would outlaw the following:

Embryos that contain human and nonhuman cells, nuclei or chromosomes.
Embryos that were created by fertilizing a human egg with animal sperm, or vice versa.
A nonhuman life form “engineered” with a human brain.

This is terrible news for Animorphs and also Team Jacob. But since the bill in its current form defines non-humans in such broad terms, it has also caught the attention of transhumanists, who believe that the bill could criminalize their technological attempts at immortality.

"A nonhuman life form 'engineered' with a human brain," for example, could include a robot who uses any form of human cells to augment its artificial intelligence. It also calls to question the definition of "human." A strict definition of human could bar people who augment themselves with technology from possessing basic rights. "Would providing future embryos with intelligence or strength modifications be considered 'nonhuman'?" wondered one Redditor.

We’re a long way off from this become a real issue, but bills like this can give us an interesting insight into future legal battles surrounding transhumanity and artificial intelligence. Plus, it's another excuse to never go to Mississippi.

It's like Chat Roulette, but replace the offensive male gentalia with lovable baby animals.

Cute Roulette

Creator Courtney Lewis dishes, "We've done several ethnographic research studies on media consumption in last couple years and everyone old and young, male and female admitted that they click on animal videos.  Since it had nothing to do with the client projects we were working on, we decided to take the insight and run with it. We launched it even though it's held together with glue and duct tape because it was a tough Friday with too many deadlines. And hey, it's the Internet. You launch now and fix while it's live."