In the first half, historian and UFO researcher Richard Dolan talked about the FBI's UFO document, the Hottel memo, as well as various UFO cases and crash retrievals. The Hottel memo has been declassified since the late 1970s, and has resurfaced at various points since then, most recently, with the FBI's announcement that this document is the most popular file in The Vault, their electronic reading room, opened in 2011. The short memo, dated March 22nd, 1950 describes flying saucers 50 ft. in diameter containing 3 ft. tall humans. According to the memo, an Air Force investigator stated that three circular craft had been recovered in New Mexico, and each was occupied by three small humans dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. The story was based on rumors, and reportedly the FBI didn't follow up on it. However, Dolan revealed that J. Edgar Hoover was actually quite interested in UFOs.
Early UFO investigator Frank Scully wrote about a UFO crash in Aztec, NM in 1948, and this may have been the incident that was referred to in the Hottel memo. While some have claimed the Aztec crash was a hoax, there has been strong research by people such as Scott & Suzanne Ramsey to show otherwise, Dolan noted. Interestingly, during 1950, the Air Force was running Project Twinkle to triangulate anomalous 'fireballs' that flew in surprising patterns. They triangulated an object 30 ft. in diameter flying at 150,000 ft. over New Mexico, which is much higher than any man-made craft at the time. As far as the 'alien' occupants of UFOs, he pondered whether they might be artificially created organisms that are custom designed to function here on Earth. Dolan teaches an online class, Introduction to Ufology, at the International Metaphysical University.
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In the latter half, business technology strategist, futurist and expert in the impact of technology on humans and society, Robert Harken, discussed the latest in transhumanism, colonizing space and the transition to the singularity in which computers match human intelligence and possibly compete for control of Earth. We're going to need to understand more about biotechnology, and how the human mind works in order to replicate that level of intelligence in computers/robotics, he pointed out. While computers might be able to display emotions realistically, they won't have the same framework as humans to feel them as we do, he noted.
Harken explored how we'll interact with sentient AI life forms as they evolve in the coming decades, and suggested a number of outcomes. After the technological singularity, we'll be dealing with four different types of beings-- organic human beings (how we are today), enhanced humans (genetically modified to increase intelligence and physical performance), digital humans (people's minds uploaded to a computer architecture), and artificial life forms that never existed as humans. These last two types "will have an incredible ability to evolve very rapidly," and transcend the organic humans' intelligence, he surmised. Harken also conjectured about the future of space travel, and intriguingly posited that in long distance missions, a body of a person could be cloned when the ship arrives at its destination, "so you could live your life here on Earth, send your stem cells in a cryonic state...and your digital information to replicate you at the new planet."
News segment guests: John R. Lott, Bill Spillane