Humanity+

Recently Humanity+ board members Sonia Arrison, and Kristi Scott resigned. We are sorry to see them leave but we are also thankful for the contributions they both made. We wish them well in their endeavors.

To bring the board back to full operating capacity, and to fulfill the organization’s constitution, we are now asking for nominations for new board member candidates. To stand in the election for these two open seats, the candidates – who can also nominate themselves – must be supporting or sustaining members of Humanity+ in good standing, and must send their statements of candidacy via email to the Secretary. The duties of the Board Members are defined in the constitution and bylaws of the organization, and from an operational point of view they are currently expected to participate in email discussion and be present in monthly phone board meetings. The term of the two new members will end at the time the term of the members they are substituting.

Nominations close 6th of August. We’ll then provide a bio on each candidate and ask for our membership to vote on who you think would best serve the organization as we carry Humanity+ into the future. Voting will be open for two weeks, after which we’ll and announce the new board members to you all. Just as the nominations, voting also is reserved to supporting or sustaining members in good standing: this is the perfect time to become a member, or to renew you lapsed membership, and support Humanity+!

Joel Pitt
Secretary, Humanity+

[UPDATED: "and must send their statements of candidacy via email to the Secretary" to clarify the nomination procedures]

Here is an introduction to the talk that Humanity+ Board Member Natasha Vita-More is going to give at H+ Summit @ Harvard, in her own words:

What does second-order cybernetics have to do with human enhancement?

I anticipate human physiology going through a transformative resolution much as astronomy did with the Copernicus Revolution, as physics did with Quantum mechanics, as heredity did with the Principles of Inheritance, and as medicine with the Genome Revolution. The one element which is essential to the transformation of physiology is its self-directed nature.

Years ago, in the 1950-70s, a group of individuals with varied backgrounds were deeply drawn to two distinct areas of scientific study—biology and cognition. One such enthusiast was Norbert Weiner, an engineer and a philosopher, who applied the term “cybernetics” to the growing interest in communications and patterns of behavior. Taking this concept to a more inclusive set of principles, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson emphasized the element of ecology of variables through second-order cybernetics. Our entire environment and its universe is an independent but interrelated, unified wholesystem, and we as life forms within this system are agents of our own physiological system. Thinking mechanisms, specifically computer generated, are interconnected systems of communications, feedback and observation.

Enhancing physiology relates to new types of human bodies, brains and behaviors, which need better processes for observation and feedback. We need to be aware what is occurring with our cells, organs and internal systems. We need to recognize how to formulate knowledge based on more intelligent and rigorous assimilation of information. We also need to be more conscious of our behaviors in how we communicate with others and how we protect our well-being. Put to the test of problem-solving, the elements form a design ecology of human enhancement.

In short, the odds are that technology will immeasurably extend human life. Until then, we need to stay alive. What ideas, means, and methods are available?

My talk covers the Human Enhancement Project as one place to start. The project began in the late 1990s with designs for transhuman and posthuman prototypes. From 2004 to 2008, it initiated a theory of human enhancement as an adaptive system and linking already available information on scientific, technological and philosophical approaches to human futures. Technology’s array of high-tech systems of robotics, AI, computer-based simulations, biotech and nanotech evidence the potential for augmenting our physiology. Sciences’ cybernetic study of systems and models imparts the awareness that ideas, means, and methods are integrated. From 2008 to the present, it has been looking for answers in dealing with a central issue that while a large percentage of society in the Western world considers certain technological augmentations as normal; an even larger percentage of socio-biopolitics considers technological enhancement as abnormal and even repugnant. This is a predicament.

The Human Enhancement Project delivers a developing sensibility which every citizen scientist might want to know for participating in an enhancement design ecology.

I look forward to seeing you all at the Summit!

UK Humanity+ has frequent meetings, often with very interesting and informative talks. Luckily for everybody not able to attend them, there’s a YouTube channel.

As of today we have six new members of the Humanity+ Board of Directors:

Joel Pitt
Natasha Vita-More
Kristi Scott
David Orban
Amy Li
Michael Vassar

For information about the new members please see their candidate statements.

Three individuals are also leaving the Board at the same time,

James Hughes
Nick Bostrom
Mike Treder

and we all owe these guys huge thanks for their role in shaping transhumanism as a whole, and the H+/WTA organization in particular, over the last years.

There is good reason to hope that, with the new perspectives and new energy coming to the board this year — along with the ever-accelerating march forward of science and technology — it’ll be a breakthrough year for H+.

Watch this space for developments in the coming months!

These are exciting times for the Russian Transhumanist Movement: They have moved to a new office in a great-looking building in Moscow, and during the past months have worked very hard on organizational training and networking, linked with scientists, engineers, and transhumanists from Russia, Spain, Italy, India, and China (cryonics being an area in which the RTM is particularly active).

In the memetic front, they have had media appareances, published articles, made podcasts, etc, and are editing Alexey Turchin’s second book on existentional risks “Structure of the Global Catastrophe: Risks of Human Extinction in the XXI Century” (English version available here).

Of potential interest to Chapter organizers (and pretty much everybody else), Danila Medvedev recently mentioned in the internal mailing list for Chapter Officers an organizational device that has worked very well for them:

We decided to create a Council of Activists (more like a Board), we did it. We didn’t waste our time on setting up a formal voting process, etc.

So we got some people, they started doing work. And more and more the CA changed from being a governing body to being an activist group. We also have the freedom to kick people out of CA if they are not active. So every 2-4 months we clean the CA from lazy bums.

Works great.