News Index

NEWS OF THE WORLD TRANSHUMANIST ASSOCIATION

July 16, 2002

CONTENTS:
NOTE FROM THE SECRETARY
TRANSVISION 2003 USA: June 27-29, Yale Univ
NEWS FROM THE FIELD
TRANSHUMANISM IN THE NEWS
UPCOMING CONFERENCES
REVIEW OF MINORITY REPORT

_____________________________
NOTE FROM THE SECRETARY

June was slow in transhumanville, but July is picking up with gale
force winds. The Williams scandal in the U.S. has made cryonics a
household word. Medicine and nanotech continue to plunge ahead, from
building viruses to replacement parts. And the transhumanist
community appears to be on the move, with an exponential doubling of
activity every six months. Check out all the new chapters being
started in major North American cities: Toronto, New York, San
Francisco, Chicago, etc., as well as around the world. One big push
this Fall is to start student organizations, to tap the power of
youth. If you are a student, or know a student interested in starting
a transhumanist organization, please let me know.

And have a fun summer, at least in the Northern hemisphere.

J. Hughes
Secretary, World Transhumanist Association

____________________________________________
TRANSVISION 2003 USA CONFERENCE IN THE PLANNING

The World Transhumanist Association will be holding its first North
American meeting June 27-29 (almost certain), 2003 at Yale University
in New Haven, Connecticut. The conference theme will
be "Transhumanism: From 20th Century Bioethics to 21st Century
Biopolicy" and will attempt to bring together transhumanists with
bioethicists and select critics of enhancement technology. Housing
will be available in student dorms as well as local hotels.

________________________
NEWS FROM THE FIELD

TORONTO, CANADA: Simon Smith of Betterhumans.com and friends are
organizing a Toronto chapter of the WTA. Contact Simon at
simon@betterhumans.com if you are interested in staying in touch with
their effort.

MIDWESTERN USA: Transcentral Transhumanists, many of whom are
students in the Illinois, are organizing their first meeting in the
Chicago area for 8/3/2002. Subscribe to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TransCentral/ to stay in touch with
what they are doing, and contact Ben Hijink if you are interested in
attending: ben_hyink9@yahoo.com.

AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND: Elizabeth Theiler, a psychologist
and "futurity fitness" consultant in Australia, has taken on the task
of organizing the Australian and New Zealand transhumanists.
Subscribe to the new wta-aunz list if you are interested in
Anglophonic Pacific Rim events and discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wta-aunz/. Contact Elizabeth at
Theiler@bigpond.com.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, USA: Michael Annisimov and Matthew Woods have
started a Bay Area WTA chapter and yahoo list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BAtrans/. Contact Michael at
altima@yifan.net.

WASHINGTON D.C., USA: As fights over stem cell funding and cloning
bans heat up in Washington, the DC Transhumanists are never far from
the action....  Just across the Potomac in Arlington actually, where
we meet four times a year for dinner at the notorious immortalist
hangout, the Hamburger Hamlet. If you're in the area or will be
planning a visit, come join us for good food and better conversation
at our next dinner get-together on Thursday, September 5.  All are
welcome -- bring a friend, bring the kids. The subjects discussed at
these meetings include history, technology, radio communication, life
extension, physics, spam, science fiction and other related topics.
Stay in touch with the D.C. area happenings by checking out
http://www.keithlynch.net/dct/ and subscribing to the TransEast list
at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TransEast/.

LOS ANGELES, USA: Transhumanist Arts & Culture (a WTA affiliate) is
sponsoring a Getty Museum Salon and Soiree on the first Friday
evening and the last Sunday morning of August. August's topic of
discussion:  "Cryonics - Recent News Explosion!". For more
information: natasha@natasha.cc. Also if you are interested in
working with Natasha on a course syllabus for a social sciences
and/or communications deptartments on transhumanism, please contact
her at natasha@natasha.cc.

LONDON, UK: ExtroBrittania and the British Transhumanist Association
have been meeting monthly in London. The next meeting is scheduled
for Saturday, the 20th of July, at 12 noon at the now usual location
of the basement cafe of  Waterstones Bookshop in Piccadilly, London,
UK. Map at:
http://www.multimap.com/clients/browse.cgi?
client=amazon&local=0&GridE=529320&GridN=180474
Stay in touch with what the British transhumanists are up to by
subscribing to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/btameeting/. The
subject of this month's meeting will be the Fukuyama - Stock debate
(Our Posthuman Future-Redesigning Humans) and Stock - Kurzweil debate
(the so-called green-gray future). Also, some Extrobritannia/BTA
members have been discussing publishing a hard-copy Transhumanist
Magazine, probably on a quarterly basis. Contact Julian at
transtigger@aol.com if you have copy to contribute or want to help.

NEW YORK CITY: Justin Zimmerman [justin@coyokohama.org] is interested
in starting a transhumanist group in NYC. 

PEOPLE:

- WTAer Natasha Vita-More has been elected to the Advisory Council of
Alcor Foundation. Max More, the president of Extropy Institute and
also a member of Alcor, participated in a debate with bioethicist
Jonathan Moreno on July 9 on CNN's Crossfire, prompted by the recent
controversy involving Ted Williams' cryonic suspension. A complete
transcript of the show is available online at:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0207/09/cf.00.html. Max More and
Natasha Vita-More will shortly be moving to Austin, Texas, but assure
us that their email addresses will be unaffected.

- WTA Chair Nick Bostrom has received the British Academy's Junior
Research Fellowship and will be moving over to Oxford University to
spend the next three years on his philosophical research and writing.

- WTA Secretary J. Hughes spoke at and moderated a panel
on "Speculative Fiction and Transhumanism" at the 14th Readercon in
Boston Massachusetts, July 14. The other panelists were authors Matt
Jarpe and Jennifer Barlow, and Linux guru Marcel Gagne. About 50
folks attended and it appeared to be warmly appreciated by all. Watch
http://www.changesurfer.com/eventhorizon/ for a link to an MP3 of the
event.

- Eliezer Yudkowsky has published an essay on AI-Box experiments:
http://sysopmind.com/essays/aibox.html

- Danila Medvedev has taken on the task of translating the
Transhumanist FAQ into Russian. If you have Russian language
materials or links of TH interest, let us know.

- WTA affiliate BJKlien.com is holding on-line chats, Sundays at 8pm,
on immortalist topics. Check them out at http://www.bjklein.com/chat.

____________________________________________
THINGS TO READ AND 
TRANSHUMANISM IN THE NEWS

We Are Becoming Cyborgs  by Ray Kurzweil
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0468.html

Arguments for a Green AND Gray Future by Ray Kurzweil
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0462.html

Robert Wright and Francis Fukuyama debate  cloning and transhuman tech
in five day  tennis match on Slate
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067783&entry=206780 3

The convergence of nanoscale research with  other sciences and
technologies has created a  vast opportunity to enhance human
performance, says the National Science and  Technology Council's
Subcommittee on  Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology  in a
report released today titled "Converging  Technologies for Improving
Human Performance."
http://wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/

Brains: Good, Bad, and Modified (Glenn Harlan Reynolds)
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-
250&CID=1051-060502A

Cyborgization Improves Lives (Glenn Harlan Reynolds)
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-
250&CID=1051-071002A

Bush's President's Council on Bioethics has released its report on
cloning, "Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry," at:
http://www.bioethics.gov/cloningreport/
It advocates a moratorium on cloning research, which was a compromise
between the hard-line position of cloning banners and the research
advocates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/politics/11CLON.html
http://www.nandotimes.com/healthscience/story/463418p-3706340c.html

Scientists reported on Thursday that they had constructed a virus
from scratch for the first time, synthesizing a live polio virus.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/12/science/12POLI.html

Nerve cells extracted from a patient's own  nose could one day be
used to cure paralysis
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id= ns99992524

L'AFFAIRE CRYO-WILLIAMS

Family of Ted Williams states they will sue Alcor
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/news/2002/07/08/williams_cry
onics/

Williams' Executor Says He Wanted to be Frozen at the End
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-BBO-Ted-Williams.html

Ted's Excellent Adventure  By Ronald Bailey
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-
250&CID=1051-071202B

Even for the Last .400 Hitter, Cryonics Is the Longest Shot
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/10/science/10WILL.html

The strange history of Ted Williams and his son
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2002/07/12/ted_williams/index.html

They've Seen the Future and Intend to Live It
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/16/science/physical/16FUTU.html

Cryonics Boosters Warm to Reports of Frozen  Star
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020709/od_nm/cryonics_dc_1

Wired News : Get Yer Ice-Cold Afterlife Here
http://wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,53709,00.html

Q&A Regarding Cryonics 
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020708/ap_on_sp_ba_n
e/ted_williams_cryonics_q_a_1

ALCOR - Life Extension Foundation has a brand new web site and logo:
http://www.alcor.com/

___________________________
UPCOMING CONFERENCES

If you will be attending one of these conferences, please let me
know. We would like to start putting out WTA leaflets on the
literature tables, and generally raising our profile at these kinds
of events.

July 21-26, 2002
ECAI-2002: 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Lyon, France
http://ecai2002.univ-lyon1.fr/show_en.pl
 
July 20-22, 2002
The Annual Conference of the World Future Society Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, USA
http://www.wfs.org/2002mainpg.htm
 
July 9, 2002
Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference-2002
New York City, USA
http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu:8080/GECCO-2002/

July 28 - August 1, 2002
18th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/National/2002/aaai02.html

August 18-22, 2002
7th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence
National Center of Sciences, Tokyo, Japan
http://pricai-02.nii.ac.jp/

August 9-15, 2003
18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Acapulco, Mexico
http://ijcai.org/IJCAIfutureconf.htm

September 9-12, 2002
Nanotech 2002 -At the Edge of Revolution
Houston, Texas, USA
http://www.nanotechnews.com/nanotechnews/nano/1007400512/index_html

November 15-17, 2002
ALCOR'S 5th Annual Extreme Life Extension Conference
Newport Beach, CA.
http://www.alcor.org/conferences/2002/

_______________________________
REVIEW OF MINORITY REPORT

Dick Dumbed Down
by Mike Treder

Back in the 1950's, many science fiction writers were apparently
fascinated with the idea that paranormal studies could someday lead
to the discovery of provable, replicable, and even manageable extra
sensory perception (ESP) in humans. Most of what these writers wrote
was rubbish. Some of it was brilliant. The writing of Philip K. Dick
generally belongs in the latter category.

The new movie Minority Report, based on a P. K. Dick short story of
the same title, concerns the harnessing of human precognition as a
tool to prevent murders. As a film, it's a disappointment,
considering that Steven Spielberg directed. I went to the theater
hoping that Spielberg would show due respect for the Science in SF.
The basic story, naturally, has considerable interest, and when
written it featured state of the art scientific extrapolation; the
execution of the movie, sad to say, suffers considerably from obvious
appeals to the lowest common denominator. Minority Report is Dick
dumbed down.

In terms of pure film criticism, it's easy to lament a complete lack
of character development, a ridiculously stereotyped and predictable
villain and gratuitously flashy action pieces, not to mention clunky
fist fights and stupid cops that seem to come from a different movie
altogether. But as a lifelong devotee of great science fiction, my
major objection to Minority Report is its wildly uneven depiction of
the future. Granted, your average filmgoer would probably not notice
or care, but for me, the little details really stick out: things like
cell phones and hypodermic needles that will clearly be out of date
in five years, let alone fifty.

Of course, given today's extremely rapid and rapidly accelerating
pace of scientific discovery and technological development, it may
not be possible to present a depiction of our world fifty years hence
with any credibility. Indeed, it leads one to wonder: If the 1950's
SF fascination with ESP seems quaint to us today, which science
fiction fads of our time will be looked upon as anachronistic by our
grandchildren?

For my money, the closest any filmmaker has come to capturing the
flavor if not the exact look of the potential human future was made
way back in 1968. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, made with
a little help from Arthur C. Clarke, is still the best of them all.
My advice to Mr. Spielberg, if he's listening, is to pay more
attention to period detail and less to fight sequences; you may not
please the trailer park crowd, but your film could have far greater
impact and more lasting appeal.

Mike Treder is an incipient posthuman, and the Treasurer for the WTA.

_________________
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