The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists

The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists begins with “We transhumanists have adopted a clear and ambitious goal since the birth of the Italian Transhumanist Association: to create in our country the conditions for a moral and intellectual revolution with a Promethean orientation. A revolution capable of producing radical changes in the world of culture and daily life”.

I have had the pleasure and the honor to contribute to this very important document, together with Giuseppe Lucchini, Alberto Masala and Stefano Vaj. But the main writer is the philosopher Riccardo Campa, the President of the Italian Transhumanist Association and a former Board member of the World Transhumanist Association. I hope the Manifesto will be translated, but translating a dense document of 14 pages is not easy work. I will translate some excerpts here, and wish to urge all Italian speakers to read the full text.

The definition of transhumanism is simple and crystal clear: “The cornerstone of transhumanism can be summed up in a formula: it is possible and desirable to move from a phase of blind evolution to a stage of purposeful self-directed evolution”. I agree that this simple sentence says it all. One of my first impression is that the Manifesto is a very reasonable document, very far from hysteria and “who is not with me is against me” fundamentalism. Riccardo, a visionary but pragmatic thinker, has avoided the easy mistake of proposing a one-size-fits-all black and white worldview, and acknowledged the _necessary_ diversity of opinions in the transhumanist community.

So, about politics: “Regarding politics, a recent poll shows that, in qualitative terms, in the WTA there are transhumanists of nearly every color, from the extreme left to the extreme right, and everything that lies between the two poles… transhumanists are able to look farther compared the traditional policy. The birth and development of the Internet and geographically distributed virtual communities require rethinking a whole range of issues such as the management of technology patents, copyright standards, the phenomenon of Open Source, telematics systems and satellite surveillance, citizen privacy. Technological development shows the inadequacy of a leadership still focused on the public-private dichotomy and still reasoning in limited nation-state terms”. And also: “in our synthetic view the three major fetish ideologies of the nineteenth century -the market, the state, the race- abandon the center stage to a higher value, self-directed evolution”.

About religion: “Transhumanism is not and should not be classified as a religion, although nothing prevents it from being interpreted as an alternative to religion, or as a vision that can find space inside a religious doctrine”. But also “Although open to dialogue with everyone, we see the impossibility of an agreement over principles with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, especially on issues such as artificial insemination and research in biotechnology”.

Much of the discussion on politics and religion is centered on Italian politics and the disproportionate influence of the Church on it (strange in a country where, as in most of Europe, most people do not take really seriously a religion which is not an important factor in their day-to-day life). But a lot goes much beyond Italy and is applicable also to global politics and policy making.

About the scientific worldview: “The boundary between science and science fiction is well defined. Scientific theories are one thing, and futurist speculations are a very different thing. These two areas have different functions. Research must develop, enrich and deepen the scientific conception of the world, while futurology (which is not science as it deals with futurabilia, things that may be possible but do not exist yet) explores possible future developments of current work. Without any certainty or faith… We will take care to avoid speculations too bold in public policy discourse”. But also: “To sum up, only when a technology exists and is experimentally proven it can be considered in a transhumanist policy program of action - which is typically aimed at ensuring access to citizens. Until then, it can be only a working hypothesis of scientists in their laboratories or science fiction writers in their literary works. Transhumanists are ready to recognize the importance of these speculations, because they can give meaning and direction to activism and offer a far reaching vision that permits seeing today’s issues in a cosmic perspective”.

Very far from both naive wishful thinking and bigot ultra-rationalist fundamentalism. I agree with each and every word in the text quoted, and I have been accused of being both a ultra-hard scientist without imagination, and an anti-scientific cultist. Well, these two accusations cannot be both true at the same time, and I guess I will just continue to ignore them.

One final comment to sum everything up: Bravo Riccardo!

Posted by G.P. on 02/28 at 11:35 AM
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ORANGE EXPLORES SL CULTURE!

I will participate tonight in this interesting debate on Immersionism vs. Augmentationism. Topic: These deep thinkers, all fairly well-known for their positions on immersion vs augmentation, will have an energetic debate about their differences in opinion.  Expect the conversation to touch on issues such as avatar rights, voice verification, and avatars as legal entities.  This is a debate you won’t want to miss! Come to Orange Island tonight. See full article on metaXLR8.

Posted by G.P. on 02/28 at 08:22 AM
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First SL-Transhumanists workshop

The SL-Transhumanists group organizes scheduled events (don’t miss Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg on Morphological Freedom in Second Life, March 9), and more informal events at “office hours” (picture below). See the event calendar at Extropia Core for office hours.

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At yesterday meeting we decided to organize a “First SL-Transhumanists workshop” in the second half of March in Second Life. The workshop will permit advancing towards the group’s objective of using virtual reality to overcome the fragmentation of transhumanists in brickspace, and build a cohesive-in-diversity community. The format of the workshop will be four talks of 15 min each (I answered the question “why four” with “why not?") by transhumanist speakers, each in support of a different trend or faction (ugly word, but clear), followed by a one hour round table led by a moderator and a Q/A session. The topic: transhumanist outreach and “marketing”: how to use all options available in VR and brickspace to ensure that our beautiful vision reaches as many people as possible.

We will contact the “obvious” four main speakers and a moderator soon, but please send your suggestions. We hope to produce a fun and interesting event for the audience. with a substantial debate (within the limits of civilized behavior, and humor-impaired readers please ignore the line below).

May the Robot God be with you and upload your immortal mindfile to the angelic techno-Heaven of True Believers!

Posted by G.P. on 02/25 at 08:09 AM
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Universal Immortalism: transhumanism plus hope

The Society for Universal Immortalism is a progressive religion that holds rationality, reason, and the scientific method as central tenets of its faith.

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I am a member if the Society, and wish to thank the other members for many stimulating ideas and discussions. In particular, I am indebted to R. Michael Perry for the beautiful declaration in his book ”Forever for All”: “To that end, we dedicate ourselves to finding a way one day to bring back all persons who have ever lived, so they can join in our eternal adventure”. This is a very strong idea, which may permit a full reconciliation between the scientific and religious worldviews. Universal immortalists do not propose any specific engineering approach to resurrection, but consider it as an objective that future technology may be able to achieve, someday, based on future scientific advances.

I see Universal Immortalism as Transhumanism “plus something”. This “something” is the resurrection idea: finding a way one day to bring back all persons who have ever lived. Even if Universal Immortalism is scientific speculation (we hope to resurrect the dead using “future magic” based on science and engineering), the resurrection idea is hard to swallow even for many transhumanists. For me, Universal Immortalism is perfectly compatible with transhumanism, and constitutes its logical endpoint. The engineering challenge will be huge of course, but so it was for the development of agriculture. Universal Immortalists not only hope to find a way one day to bring back all persons who have ever lived, but also intend to be there to make it happen. That is why, at this moment, being a current cryonics suspension member is a requirement to become a member of the Society for Universal Immortalism.

The full text of ”The Beliefs of the Society for Universal Immortalism” begins with: “We have a soul and it is informational in nature”.

Michael Perry is mentioned in the 1994 Wired article ”Meet the Extropians”, which was the first introduction to transhumanism for me and many other transhumanists:

Mike Perry, overseer of the 27 frozen people (actually, 17 are frozen heads, only 10 are entire bodies) submerged in liquid nitrogen at minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit (Cold enough for you?) at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics outfit in Scottsdale, Arizona, gave a talk saying that, contrary to appearances, genuine immortality was physically possible.

“Immortality is mathematical, not mystical,” he said.

Perry, with a PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado, might well think so. A rather gaunt figure, a little rumpled and slightly stooped, he’d worked out a scheme whereby if you make enough backup copies of yourself, then everlasting life can be yours forever, always, and in perpetuity.

He explained: some of the more submissive immortalists - non-Extropian immortalists, in other words - had worried about the possibility of their lives being terminated by accident, murder, or some other such form of radical unpleasantness. The way to get around that in the future, said Perry, would be to download the entire contents of your mind into a computer - your memories, knowledge, your whole personality (which is, after all, just information) - you’d transfer all of it to a computer, make backup copies, and stockpile those copies all over creation. If at some point later you should happen to suffer a wee interruption of your current life cycle, then one of your many backups would be activated, and, in a miracle of electronic resurrection, you’d pop back into existence again, good as new.

Universal Immortalism is an extension of Perry’s ideas on mind uploading (the concept of downloading the entire contents of the mind into a computer is frequently referred to as mind uploading) - a possible way to bring back all persons who have ever lived may be, once technology has advanced enough, “copying them to the future” by mind uploading performed on a mind that existed in the past.

Besides mind uploading technology, this would require time travel or a technology able to extract information with very high resolution from the past. Time travel seems to introduce logical paradoxes (you go back in time and kill your grandfather before your father was conceived - then you were not born, and cannot go back in time to kill your grandfather). But this “grandfather paradox” goes away, for example, in Everett’s interpretation of quantum physics, and there is no paradox involved in extracting information with very high resolution from the past. So while of course I realize that engineering resurrection will be a huge scientific and technical challenge, I consider it as a possibility that future scientists and engineers may be able to achieve.

A possibility that future scientists and engineers _may_ be able to achieve. If it does not prove incompatible with some fundamental physical law. If our species does not destroy itself before. If, instead of falling prey of superstition and religious fundamentalism, we continue our journey towards more and more knowledge and mastery of reality. There are no buts (universal immortalism can _not_ be thought of as a bad thing), but there are many ifs. We are not selling certainties, but we are offering hope. Hope permits happiness, and hope can provide the drive and energy to do something to take today’s reality closer to the reality we wish to inhabit. The Society for Universal Immortalism has only 10 members as I am writing this -this has something to do with the fact that a cryonic suspension agreement is a current membership requirement- and is very far from taking over the world, but I often think that the vision of our tiny and unknown society of ten members could be _exactly_ what billions of people on this little blue planet need, if only we could find effective ways to communicate its beauty.

Posted by G.P. on 02/24 at 10:03 AM
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Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg on Morphological Freedom in Second Life, March 9

Join us on March 9, 12:00-13:30 SLT (noon PST, 3pm EST, 9pm EU, 8pm UK) for a seminar on Morphological Freedom in Second Life, by Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg:

Do individual humans have a natural right to Morphological Freedom - the right to seek augmentation and enhancement - and the right not to be coerced to augment and enhance?

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Both Natasha and Anders have spoken at previous events organized by the SL-Transhumanist group, of which Natasha was one of the founding members, and this will be one of the main events ever.

Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg
***
SUNDAY
MARCH, 9th
12:00-13:30 SLT
in Second Life
***
SL-Transhumanists@ extropia core

Posted by G.P. on 02/22 at 07:54 AM
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My interview on The Future and You podcast

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Stephen Euin Cobb for his award-winning podcast The Future And You. Stephen is a U.S. science fiction author, futurist, a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine, the online magazine from Baen Books. Within Second Life his avatar’s name is “Boc Cryotank.” Stephen is also a game designer, artist, essayist and transhumanist. In each episode of The Future And You Stephen interviews a variety of authors, scientists, celebrities and “pioneers of the future” as to what they believe both the near future and distant future will be like for individuals as well as for humanity in general.

My interview focused on Second Life, Virtual Reality technology and business, possible mid and long term evolutions of VR, Artificial Intelligence and other technologies, our work at metafuturing, transhumanism, the WTA, the IEET, and various thoughts about the future (and the present). Stephen’s thoughts on “schisms” in virtual and physical realities (at the beginning) are quite similar to my own.

Listen to the mp3 podcast (it is also archived on the metaXLR8 server).

Here is the text of Stephen’s blog post on the show website. See also the post on the Extropia Core blog - Extropia Core is the main meeting place for transhumanists in Second Life. Not much to add to my profile (too bad that I do not find enough time for some of the projects he mentions, such as the (almost) late lamented Fastra and FutureTAG). See my articles More voices from Second Life and Life 2.0 and Life 2.0: augmentationists in Second Life and beyond for more thoughts on the tension between immersionists and augmentationists within her virtual world.

Giulio Prisco (futurist, scientist, corporate consultant and until recently the Executive Director of the World Transhumanist Association) is today’s featured guest. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and on the Global Task Force on Implications and Policy for CRN, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

Argent Bury (a digital person living exclusively within Second Life) provides an essay concerning the tension between immersionists and augmentationists within her virtual world.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 20, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 79 minutes]

Giulio Prisco also covers the prejudice and intolerance between immersionists and augmentationists, and mentions that the day before the interview, Cervantes University held its very first college class within Second Life, and discusses many aspects of the future of virtual realities.

A virtual reality expert and consultant for companies wishing to use and benefit from many different VR platforms, Giulio describes what’s available now, and what will be available in the decades to come. From the current photorealistic graphics, to the total immersion through full sensory feedback directly wired into the human nervous system.

He describes various VR platforms including Second Life and its competitors, as well as the possibility that all the platforms will become linked together into a unified whole, just as the internet was once many separate little nets that could not share content.

Giulio Prisco is also the Director of the futurist consulting consortium called FutureTag, as well as founder and CEO of Metafuturing (a company specializing in Science and Technology Consulting, Internet Services and Virtual Reality). Based in Madrid, Spain, he founded the Spanish transhumanist group FASTRA. He is a former physicist and computer scientist, as well as a former manager at ESA: the European Space Agency.

Posted by G.P. on 02/21 at 07:33 PM
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Happy Valentine with chocolate to everyone from a transhumanist numbskull

I have given and received Valentine presents like last year. Next year I will certainly give some and hopefully receive some. Yesterday I reacted to a post titled Valentine’s Nay by an author (guess) who felt the need to inform his readers that Valentine is all about “cheap crap squirted into a heart-shaped mould on an assembly line in the presence of who knows what human suffering”, concluded that “I wish the Left would shed this elitism”, and was immediately labeled by the author as a “numbskull who idiotically accused him of being over-intellectual and elitist”.

I might comment about the manners of this gentleman, but I don’t really care too much and often the best policy is just ignoring aggressive jer persons. I will comment on another issue: he is, of course, (over)reacting not to what I actually said, but to the fact that a transhumanist dares to read and comment to his blog. Or, in his words: “Tell all the down home “folks” how you plan to become an immortal sooperhuman by uploading your brain into a computer and how you think a Robot God will direct the nanobots one fine day to make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice… the Robot Cultist brain trust members who like to lurk around the edges of my blog because I talk about the politics of emerging technoscience here among other things”. Oops, I almost forgot the “completely batshit crazy techno-utopian crap talk of the flavor my kooky crowd peddles”.

The interesting thing is that my post had NOTHING to do with sooperhumans, uploading, nanobots and Robot Gods. I was just trying to tell him that perhaps not all chocolate makers use “cocoa beans harvested by child slave labor on the Ivory Coast”, and that over intellectualism and elitism from exponents of the Left “often results in the Right winning the elections with the results that we all know”. But the gentleman did not even consider what I had actually written, perhaps did not even read it, and immediately launched one of his frequent anti-transhumanist rants which was, as everyone can see, COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the subject under discussion.

I can only conclude that these people are so obsessively focused on their visceral hatred against transhumanists that they see everything filtered by an anti-transhumanist polarized lens and are not capable of having a rational discussion about anything else. If they are what passes for intellectuals these days, I am happy and proud of being a numbskull.

Posted by G.P. on 02/16 at 12:39 PM
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Natasha Vita More in Second Life on “Design Wars: Humanish vs. Postbiologicals (Singularity)”

Great talk of Natasha Vita-More in Second Life yesterday February 3rd, on “Design Wars: Humanish vs. Postbiologicals (Singularity)”. I am sure more pictures and transcripts will be posted soon to one of the SL-Transhumanists sites. See also this short video clip.

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Natasha’s own announcement: This event is an open discussion.  All SL-transhumanist participants’ ideas and/or humor will be credited/mentioned at the LABoral Industrial Design Institute conference in Spain. In the summer of 2008, LABoral Industrial Design Institute is hosting the “Homo Ludens Ludens” conference.

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SL-Transhumanists are invited to have FUN with the content and context of the “Design Wars” of humanish vs. postbiologicals. A key consideration is the issue of species hierarchy and whether humanity ought to look biological as we merge with smarter-than-human intelligence. “In a perfect world, all species would learn to get along. Due to the Singularity, humanity learns they are not the only life form with consciousness and aesthetic taste”.

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In this short video clip you can see the variety of body design styles of SL-Transhumanists, which was considered by Natasha as an example of things to come in brick-biospace. I was very pleased to see that the SL-Transhumanists group in Second Life has almost 100 members.

Posted by G.P. on 02/04 at 07:28 AM
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