(Photo: Bombed in Outerspace)

Okay, folks: this is not a drill. The Singularity is set to hit the silver screen, with Batman director Christopher Nolan signed on to executive produce.

The Wrap reports that in the film, titled Transcendence and based on a story by Jack Paglen, Johnny Depp "will play a scientist whose brain is uploaded into a supercomputer" while trying to create the first ever sentient computer. Nanotechnology and the Singularity are also said to play pivotal roles in the film, which explains the nerd boner you are currently sporting.

Johnny Depp may seem like a strange casting choice, but given his penchant for bizarre roles, we imagine he'll play a mad scientist quite convincingly. He'll be playing the main character, Will, who is assassinated by terrorists who are against technology. When his wife uploads his brain, Will begins to respond to her queries through the computer. By hooking his brain-cum-computer up to the Internet, he can continue his scientific research.

The Wrap warns that the script summary it received could be out of date, but honestly as long as the film includes brain supercomputers and Christopher Nolan, we'll be just fine. Now if we can get Ray Kurzweil as an advisor to this thing, it's sure to be an instant masterpiece.

With the holidays swiftly approaching, we decided to fashion together a little cheat sheet for anyone stumped as to what to buy their closest friend with cyborg dreams. Behold, the top 10 gifts for the futurists/transhumanists/singulatarians in your life.

(Photo: The Star)

What's a thousand-pound steel monster controlled entirely by a computer, no human required? It's a driverless car! And it's one step closer to legally operating on public roads. The Singularity is nigh, friends.

According to Ars Technica, the California State Senate officially passed SB 1289, which--following the creation of standards and performance requirements by the DMV--would allow robot cars to hit the open road.

Writes Ars:

California legislators have sent a bill to the governor’s desk that could push forward the development of autonomous cars in the Golden State. The new bill requires the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to adopt new regulations, including safety standards and “performance requirements” for new autonomous vehicles. Once those new rules are put in place, the bill “would permit autonomous vehicles to be operated or tested on the public roads in this state.”

We spent years driving up and down that stretch of freeway between Palo Alto and San Francisco, so we understand California's eagerness to pass this bill. Driverless cars can't possibly be any more dangerous than the drivers sitting in traffic on the 101 right now.

(Photo: Venturist.info)

A few weeks ago, a 23-year-old girl named Kim Suozzi took to Reddit with a tragic backstory: during her senior year of college, she was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of brain cancer that--after many treatment options had been explored--was deemed untreatable. Ms. Suozzi wrote that she has a 6 to 10 month median survival rate. "I have to prepare to die," she wrote painfully matter-of-factly. "In a way, I am fortunate because the lesion is primarily in my brain stem (controls things like breathing), so I will likely die before the tumor spreads to the areas central to who I am."

Ms. Suozzi was writing to Reddit to ask for donations so that she could afford her dying wish. Fund-raisers for cancer patients on the social news site are nothing new, particularly because potent group pathos is a familiar chord plucked in the community, one that has proven to be a compelling driving force. What makes Ms. Suozzi's case especially interesting is what exactly her dying wish is: the 23-year-old St. Louis resident wants to have her body cryogenically frozen:

I'm back on Reddit again, mostly to ask for help because I want to be cryogenically preserved upon my death. I've been interested in cryonics since long before I was even diagnosed, but I never thought that I would have to secure the finances so fast, and without a career or savings to stand on. As weird as it feels to ask for help here, I feel I should just give it a shot and sees what happens ... I know this is a big thing to ask for, and I'm sure many people are doubtful that preservation is plausible with cryonics. I'm far from convinced, but I would rather take the chance with preservation than rot in the ground or get cremated.

Reddit reacted with its typical mix of skepticism and support, but the majority of users argued with Ms. Suozzi's decision, claiming that believing in cryogenics is a blind leap of faith just as ridiculous as believing in religion (it didn't help that Ms. Suozzi posted her request in the Athiesm subreddit).

The top comment, penned by a user who claimed to also have been diagnosed with cancer and grappled with the specter of death, wrote a bleak comment arguing against Ms. Suozzi's wishes to be preserved:

We'll all be forgotten, and even the ground we walk on will one day be gone as well.

In two generations time, no one will know us or our lives. There is no worth in staying longer ... Defy you biological imperatives to desire to survive longer, and instead live and die knowing yourself better that most could ever dream of. Recognize that those biological drives that wish to survive forever have truly already betrayed you, in their own way, through bringing about your end ... Really, cryogenics is just a modern day take on the age old story of religion: "come with me and live forever." Forget that lie, and live for today, more fully than most will live any day their entire lives.

Less Wrong, an online community for futurists, singularitarians and human rationalists, immediately picked up on Ms. Suozzi's Reddit post, and lamented the community's reaction to her desire to be preserved. "Looking at some of the negative comments and worst of all bad arguments people are using as reasons not to donate made me more upset," wrote a user named Konkvistador. "I hope some here might join me in dismantling them."

Perhaps because they are rationalists to their core, or because of Reddit's historical failure to debunk fraudulent fund-raisers--and to ruin the lives of people who aren't faking at all--the Less Wrongers were wary of donating to Ms. Suozzi's case until it was proven true. But a few days ago, the Society for Venturism, a nonprofit located in Arizona, decided to spearhead the fund-raising efforts for Ms. Suozzi. It was a natural partnership, considering the Society's mission: "To advocate and promote the worldwide conquest of death and the continuation and enhancement of life through technological means, including cryonic suspension."

Many of the suspicions about scams were put to rest when the Society for Venturism vouched for Ms. Suozzi's claims, writing that it had investigated her background and medical paperwork before setting up its own charitable arm to help Ms. Suozzi reach her goal. The news was promptly picked up by KurzweilAI and other Singularity blogs. The Society for Venturism has already funded two successful "Cryonics Charity Cases."

Ms. Suozzi's dying wish invokes complex questions surrounding the nature of life, death and the afterlife, and what science can do--and not do--to comfort us in our final days. Many Redditors seemed to think that Ms. Suozzi was grasping at straws, desperately hoping to prolong her short life because she couldn't accept the fact that she was dying after so little time to live.

"Unfortunately the most interesting thing [I've done] is get a terminal disease at a young age," she wrote in her Reddit post.

Now the futurists, who primarily live on the fringes of science, are hoping they can change that.

Mr. Friedman (ideacityonline.com)

We're not sure how closely you follow the fascinating world of college dropout fans Peter Thiel & Pals, but the writers at Betabeat have had more than one animated conversation about Thiel-funded libertarian utopias and life longevity experiments. One of the PayPal cofounder's buddies is Patri Friedman, the San Francisco-based grandson of economist Milton Friedman, who shares some of Mr. Thiel's notions of libertarian politics: mainly, that establishing floating cities in international zones will "give people the opportunity to peacefully test new ideas about how to live together."

Mr. Thiel has funneled millions into the Seasteading Institute, the primary initiative working to construct these floating cities, which is the brainchild of Mr. Friedman. But recently, Mr. Friedman stepped down as the institute's executive officer to become chairman of the board, a move that had some wondering whether Mr. Thiel and Mr. Friedman had had a falling out.

Not true, Mr. Friedman told us by phone last week. "[James Hogan and I] had actually been setting up a transition plan and finding new people to run it for six months or so. I’m more of a starter of projects than a maintainer and the institute seemed off to a good start. And I said, 'Okay, what does this movement need next?'"

In fact, despite Mr. Friedman's transition away from the day-to-day activities at Seasteading, he and Mr. Thiel are still business partners. Mr. Friedman told us that Mr. Thiel is "one of the major investors in Future Cities," Mr. Friedman's new pet project that exploits an amendment to the Honduran constitution and seeks "to build a chartered city within an uninhabited special development region in Honduras."

Unfortunately, bureaucracy surrounding the new decision has slowed the project's progress. But luckily for Mr. Friedman, he just scored a book deal with a major publishing house to write about the concept of seasteading.

"We have a seasteading book contract with Simon & Schuster," he told us. "We got a nice advance, and so that’s coming out next year."

The Financial Times had a fascinating piece this weekend about a new breed of entrepreneurs who are applying the same metrics-obsessed, data-driven approach to optimizing their start-ups to optimizing their bodies. These "self-quantifiers" seem to embody the credo best-satirized by Radiohead on their 1997:

Fitter, happier, more productive/comfortable, not drinking too much/regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)/getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries/at ease/eating well/(no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)

There is at least one local devotee of the practice: Aviary co-founder and CCO Michael Galpert. In fact, not only is Mr. Galpert self-quantifying, he's urging Aviary's employees to quantify as well

The Times describes Mr. Galpert's road to Damascus moment:

"Running a start-up, I'm always looking at numbers, always tracking how business is going," he says. Page views, clicks and downloads, he tallies it all. "That's under-the-hood information that you can only garner from analyzing different data points. So I started doing that with myself."

His weight, exercise habits, caloric intake, sleep patterns—they're all quantified and graphed like a quarterly revenue statement. And just as a business trims costs when profits dip, Galpert makes decisions about his day based on his personal ­analytics: too many calories coming from carbs? Say no to rice and bread at lunchtime. Not enough REM sleep? Reschedule that important business meeting for tomorrow.

Maybe the Singularity is coming sooner than Ray Kurzweil thought. The article also describes Mr. Galpert attempts to make converts at Aviary headquarters near Penn Station. Employees can use a mobile app to join a workplace weight loss and fitness contest that uploads daily weight and exercise routines into an shared online database that can be viewed by other employees. Mr. Galpert is convinced that physical competition will spill over into the professional arena:

"When you keep trying for one more push-up, it gets easier," he says. "It's the same at work. You can say 'the project I'm working on is done,' or you can say you'll spend a little more time to make it better."

This is either an ingenious motivational tool or a sure-fire away to speed-up turnover.