H+ New Year Party at Moscow

On December 31, 2007 Russian transhumanists celebrated the New Year 2008 with an H+ party. As far as we know, this was the first official transhumanist New Year party in the world.

17 people attended, including officials of the Russian Transhumanists Movement, a director of cryonics company, a mathematician, a director of medical centers, emergency medical personnel, a TV star, a lift engineer, a founders of abstinence society, several full-time transhumanists, a specialist in drug design, a specialist in mind uploading, web designers, politicians, programmers, some communists and a postmodernist (we needed someone to pick on).

Photos from the H+ New Year party

We took homeopatic doses of TV, including a completely forgettable and content-free speech by Mr. Putin, and small (albeit not homeopatic) doses of alcohol, though nobody got drunk and plenty of people didn’t drink much. Some people took Alertec (modafinil) instead and laughed at a latent biocon who didn’t. Overall, attending transhumanists were intentionally militant towards the bioconservative and religious forces outside the H+ circle, showing that calculated uses of our animal instincts can be productive.

H+ propaganda stickers

We launched some fireworks, walked around the block (swords drawn), placed some transhumanist stickers on walls, poles and windows around and returned back. But mostly it was an intellectual event with the emphasis on discussion and thinking. We talked about current enhancement technologies, the future and everything transhumanists discuss when they get together, watched some transhumanist YouTube playlists and previewed an unreleased transhumanist documentary.

It was a great New Year party and we will certainly do it again (bigger and better) next time!

Photos from the event are available at http://picasaweb.google.com/Danila.medvedev/2008.