Transumanar

Giulio Prisco

This is the home page of Giulio Prisco. I am a former physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. I am based in Madrid, Spain, where I run the consulting company metafuturing and contribute to the science and technology online magazine Tendencias 21.

I am mainly interested in science, new technology, IT, space, and NBIC: the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science with the goal to improve human performance, expanding human cognition and communication, improving human health and physical capabilities.

I am quite serious about improving human performance and take this concept to its logical conclusion: transhumanism. To read more start with the websites of the World Transhumanist Association, the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and KurzweilAI. I serve on the Board of Directors of the World Transhumanist Association and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. I am also a member of the Italian Transhumanist Association, the (late lamented) Extropy Institute and the Cryonics Institute - I am signed up for cryonic suspension with the CI.

Giulio Prisco

My own short and hopefully simple definition of transhumanism:

The basic tenet of classical Humanist thinking is that concrete thinking and feeling persons are more important than abstract, “artificial” ethical constructs. Extrapolating from current scientific and technological trends, we can see that our species may soon develop the capability to control its own evolution, including modifying itself in fundamental ways. Such modifications may range from life extension and cognitive enhancement (mid term), to becoming non-mortal radically enhanced software entities (long term). Transhumanists will welcome such changes as long as they result in a better life for all persons directly concerned, where “person” is defined as “thinking and feeling entity”.

That’s it. Not the will of --insert your favorite supreme being here-- ? Against --insert your favorite abstract principle here-- ? Too bad. Concrete thinking and feeling persons are more important than abstract, “artificial” ethical constructs.

My worldview in a nutshell: I appreciate that our world is complex, and am very suspicious of simple black-and-white truths, magic formulas and one-size-fits-all solutions. An engineer at heart, I believe we should carry both a hammer and a screwdriver to deal with a complex reality which contains both nails and screws. Hard thinking and hard working on a case by case basis is much better than following a pre-packaged simplified worldview and, sometimes, may permit achieving goals that seem mutually exclusive at a first glance.

I think that many libertarians and socialists have valuable ideas, and I think that many believers and atheists have valuable ideas. In politics, I wish to see some kind of smart combination of libertarian and socialist approaches. Some will say that this is impossible, but I am comforted by the fact that many thinkers whom I respect thought otherwise. I tend to be in favor of “glocalized” governance systems where decisions on issues that have a global impact are taken at a global level, and decisions on issues that only have a local impact are taken at local level. Of course, the devil is in the details.

In religion, I am an atheist in the sense that I don’t believe in the existence of any god (yet), but I tend to sympathize with the “spiritual” approach to reality and values of many believers. In other words, I can live with most combinations of moderate [socialism, libertarianism, atheism, spirituality]. At the same time, I find fundamentalism, bigotry and intolerance VERY annoying, regardless of where they come from.

I am also interested in many other things, including what unkind people would call fringe - weird science. Having been trained as a scientist, I can usually distinguish a good weird idea from a bad weird idea.

Giulio Prisco

I try to follow the impact of new technologies on culture, politics, and everyday life, and think that we have not even started using the Internet as enabling technology for radical change. Things may become much more interesting in a few years, for example with the deployment and widespread adoption of massively multiuser online virtual worlds. In 2006 I have established the presence of the World Transhumanist Association in Second Life. In the picture above I appear with my Second Life avatar while giving a lecture at the World Transhumanist Association’s conference Transvision 2006 focused on emerging technologies, which featured a parallel mixed-reality event in Second Life. The picture summarizes my main interests: transhumanism, emerging technologies and virtual reality.

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