Transhumanism

I recently attended three lectures at TransVision 2006 conference about Emerging Technologies of Human Enhancement, organized by the World Transhumanist Association. I'm linking here the abstracts from Is Life Extension an Enhancement? and Technological Evolution.

One of the lecturers, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D. and a biogerontologist, says there's a chance the first human to live a 1000 years old has already been born. Let us amuse ourselves for a while and consider this. I suspect most will say that would be a catastrophe of overpopulation - which, as you know, is becoming a reality already, regardless of the future possibilities of life extensions. This is an issue humanity will have to resolve one way or another in any case. Even if the first human to live a 1000 years had indeed been born already, it would take some great amount of time before these technologies could be put to use to benefit the rest of the humankind. This in turn gives us a fair amount of time to solve the overpopulation problem, which, and I can't emphasize this enough, we'll have to solve anyway. So why wait till we've got everything figured out - I have faith in the on-going evolution of the creative spirit of the humankind, so to say.

Another lecturer pointed out the concern some seem to have of becoming very bored if having to live that long. "Well", he said, "if life is boring, then certainly death is going to be even more boring!"

I overheard someone at the conference say Finland has the largest amount of WTA (World Transhumanist Association) members in relation to population number. Somehow this wouldn't surprise me. Most Finns I know are extremely enthusiastic regarding questions on life, death, and the possibility to better their lives, keeping ethics in mind. The following is directed to someone dear to me, who just the other day commented how I am not critical about things I get excited about. I believe any scientist in the world who ever made any significant breakthroughs had to first overcome criticism - of their own and of others. It is the brave enthusiastic mind that makes miracles happen.