Transumanar

Saturday 20 - transhumanist meetings in Second Life

Very important day in the history of transhumanism in the Metaverse, with two interesting parallel meetings in Second Life.

On uvvy island there was a meeting to revive the WTA activities in Second Life: new focus on location and type of activities. About 20 people attended. Some new managers and “animators” have been recruited with the task of organizing frequent meetings, talks, seminars and social events. Note that this is not a closed club, anyone can join. Look for the “World Transhumanist Association” group in Second Life and join. The website of the WTA Chapter in Second Life will be updated with news and announcements of new events. We really miss Charles (OneUp) and Manoj, I hope they will be back.

In the image above, taken before the meeting, I am in the uvvy pub “Fish and Prims” with Transhumanist Queen Natasha, who has been introduced to the pleasures of voice chat in Second Life, and Khannea who will take an important role as manager and animator of transhumanist activities in Second Life. Natasha told me that MAX may consider joining SL! Max, I really look forward to seeing you in SL, and there will be plenty of volunteers to help you mastering the most arcane parts of the SL interface. I think Second Life is an ideal workspace for the global transhumanist community.

After the meeting on uvvy island everyone moved to the other meeting organized by Sophrosyne Stenvaag in the Diversionarium: Beyond Bionics: Transhumanism and Virtual Worlds - a *spirited* discussion of what’s next for humans and technology.

I had some arguments with Sophrosyne’s crowd in the past, mainly about “immersionism” vs. “augmentationism” and voice in SL, that for me is just another useful tool and for most of them is a unwelcome intrusion of RL in SL that destroys the dream of living in VR world as a Digital Person. As most reasonable persons do, we just agree to disagree on this point. I must say that besides arguments on specifics I am very sympathetic with the aspirations of Digital Persons. I think in 2007 Second Life is waaaaay to primitive to be taken seriously as a parallel reality, but technology, as it usually does, will improve fast. As soon as that happens people will upload parts of their personalities to VR worlds and live there as conscious Digital Persons, like transhumanist DP Extropia Dasilva (close to the center in the picture below).

Digital Persons, uploading and the nature of consciousness were among the many topics discussed. Very interesting, I look forward to attending other similar events. The discussion was based on text-chat - it is very difficult to use voice in a crowded SL environment where everyone talks at the same time (voice is perfect for small groups), and some DP prefer not using voice anyway. This kind of meeting is a vary fast brainstorming and one has to go back to the chat history to read things again. My network link crashed halfway, but see the extended text (More… below) for partial transcripts of both meetings.

More...

Posted by G.P. on 10/21 at 07:46 AM
English • News • (6) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink • Print