TransVision 2010 is over. Thanks to all speakers and participants in Milan and Teleplace.

FINAL REPORT on KurzweilAI: Transhumanist Science, Futurist Art, Telepresence and Cosmic Visions of the Future at TransVision 2010.

See also this post on Giulio Prisco’s blog.

We will post the HD videos recorded in Milan here. See also the first videos recorded from Teleplace.

Polytopia Project

Polytopia is a philosophical experiment living on the net for the last two years, hosted as a prominent project in SpaceCollective.com. It is described as a ryzhomatic web of simultaneous explorations, confronting the necessity to create a conceptual backbone to accommodate and enhance plurality and diversity, as they are already emerging in our hyperconnected present, and are most definitely envisioned as a part of our future human communities. The presentation brings to light the main clusters of concepts that emerged in these two years of polylogue among participants, and is viewed as a work in progress.

“Sayfan” Giulia Borghini begun her journey into knowledge in the academic world, as a doctor in physics at the University of Rome, where she researched for few years in biophysics. A passionate traveler she has taken her personal questions about humanity and future across the world to meet several countries and cultures. She uses her solid background in philosophy, scientific thought and her interest in emerging perspectives to bring live questions into discussion, both in her lectures and on the web. She is following the enfoldment of transhumanist thought since 2005 when first exposed to “a Letter to Mother Nature”. In the last two years she is part in the web philosophical project Polytopia, together with a remarkable team of thinkers, visionaries and artists.

TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italywith many options for remote online access.

Accetteremo iscrizioni in sala a prezzi fortemente ridotti fino a
esaurimento dei posti disponibili. Gli ospiti dei partecipanti
iscritti avranno la priorità, per gli altri seguiremo l’ ordine di
arrivo.

TransVision 2010: Last minute strongly discounted registration at the desk.

We will accept registration at the desk at a strongly discounted price
until the conference hall is full. Guests of registered participants
will have priority, others on a first come first served basis.

We have published the final version of the conference program, updated with new abstracts by speakers including Max More, Graziano Cecchini, David Orban, Roberto Marchesini, Natasha Vita-More and, of course, Stefano Vaj and Riccardo Campa of the Italian Transhumanist Association.

Note that TODAY IS THE LAST DAY to register for the conference. REGISTER NOW to reserve your place. Registration will continue at the desk until the conference hall is full.

Those who have registered to participate remotely in the TVirtual online extension of TransVision 2010, hosted by the teleXLR8 project based on the Teleplace online telepresence platform, will be able to watch all talks in realtime, and interact with speakers and other participants. Please see the instructions for TVirtual participants.

After registration for TVirtual, you have received an invitation email from support@teleplace.com (look in the spam folder if you don’t find it). You need to:

1) Accept the invitation and create your Teleplace account
2) Download and install the Teleplace client software
3) Read the help page with simple explanation and video:
http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/teleplace/help/
4) Launch the Teleplace client software and login as explained in 3)

The Transhumanist Movement: a Sociological Overview

The central transhumanist idea of self-directed evolution can be coupled with different political, philosophical and religious opinions. Accordingly, we have observed individuals and groups joining the movement from very different persuasions. On one hand such diversity may be an asset in terms of ideas and stimuli, but on the other hand it may involve a practical paralysis, especially when members give priority to their existing affiliations over their belonging to organized transhumanism. In my lecture, I shall discuss the outlines of those internal differences.

Riccardo Campa is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cracow. He possesses two Master of Arts degrees, in Political Science and Philosophy, from the University of Bologna and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. He founded and is currently president of the Italian Transhumanist Association, and is a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.

Register now

post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.

The mission of transhumanism

Contrary to widespread expectations, be they positive or negative, eschatological or millenaristic, there are reasons to believe that the pace of change may be slowing down in comparison with what we had been living in the century going roughly from 1870 to 1970. Even some of the most spectacular achievements since fall well within the boundaries of pre-existing trends and paradigms, and risk to appear as the proverbial feats of dwarves on the shoulders of giants. Cultural and educational decadence, ideological biases, prohibition and unfavourable legal frameworks, the inertia of increasingly globalised socio-economic patterns, all play an active role in this scenario. Temptations by transhumanists to take “into their hands” what largely depends on full-scale societal and civilisational projects and/or individual genius are in most case delusional. But even more futile is to reduce oneself to a cheerleading or monitoring group of technoscientific developments which are believed to happen automagically, no-matter-what, and be mainly concerned with “steering” things which are not going to happen at all unless a sufficient mobilisation is created to that end, leading to a deep change of current policies and value systems. The mission of transhumanism is that of explicitely organising advocacy, lobbying, and metapolitical activism aimed at presenting the case for innovation and for a posthuman, and before that a posthumanist, change.

La missione del transumanismo

Al contrario delle aspettative di molti, positive o negative, escatologiche o millenaristiche, vi è ragione di ritenere che il ritmo dei processi di cambiamento stia in realtà rallentando a paragone di ciò che avevamo vissuto nel secolo che va approssimativamente dal 1870 al 1970. Persino alcuni dei risultati più spettacolari successi dei nostri giorni ricadono ampiamente nel perimetro di trend e paradigmi preesistenti. e rischiano di apparire come le proverbiale gesta di nani sulle spalle di giganti. La decadenza culturale e dei sistemi educativi, il pregiudizio ideologico, il proibizionismo ed un quadro normativo sfavorevole, l’inerzia di modelli socio-economici sempre più globalizzati, tutti giocano un ruolo in questo scenario. Le tentazioni da parte dei transumanisti di “prendere in mano” ciò che dipende largamente da progetti che richiedono il coinvolgimento di intere società o civiltà, o dal genio individuale, sono nella maggior parte dei casi figlie dell’illusione. Ma ancora più futile è ridursi a fare le cheerleaders di sviluppi tecnoscientifici che si ritiene debbano prodursi automagicamente, in ogni caso; o essere principalmente preoccupati del fatto di “guidare” cose che non vedranno mai la luce se non viene generata a tale fine una sufficiente mobilitazione che conduca ad un profondo mutamento delle politiche in essere e del sistema di valori dominante.
La missione del transumanismo è quella di organizzare esplicitamente la promozione, l’attività di lobbying e l’attivismo metapolitico volti a sostenere la causa dell’innovazione e di una trasformazione postumana, e prima ancora postumanista.

Stefano Vaj is a prominent attorney and writer in Italy, and serves as the national secretary of the larger of the two transhumanist groups in Italy, the Italian Transhumanist Association or AIT.

TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.

Register now

post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.

The Expectant Automorph: an emergent life of bio-synthetic systems

The AUTOMORPH project was developed in 1997 as a self-actualized morphing of physiology in an attempt to reduce cellular damage and increase neuroplasticity. This project steered away from cyborgnization of the human and leaned toward a different aesthetic — that of life prolongation. In recent years, the genesis of human enhancement interfacing with emerging technologies has had an affect on its ecomorphology. AUTOMORPH is one project that views human physiology as a relationship between the individual’s environment and behaviors with her/his morphological adaptations. This morphology reflects how physiology could correlate with the functional use of space and time. What variation-niche might we inhabit? What might it look like? Developments in human enhancement technologies (NBIC+) are providing designers with insights into the properties of living and synthetic systems. These insights are positioned to revolutionize the architecture of life prolongation.

Natasha Vita-More, Ph.D. researcher, University of Plymouth, is a theorist and media designer and visiting lecturer at academic institutions such as Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Applied Sciences, Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien, Centre Interuniversitaire des Arts Médiatiques, University of Quebec, and other learning intuitions such as Metanexus Institute, American Philosophical Association, Sala Parallo, Trondehim Festival, Pecci Museum, SESCE Brazil, and Lisbon Arte e Ciência Cordoaria, and Russia’s National Centre for Contemporary Arts. Vita-More is best known for “Primo Posthuman” future human prototype. Her writings have been published in numerous books, she has appeared in more than twenty-four televised documentaries, and featured in magazines including The New York Times, Wired, Village Voice, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, U.S. News & World Report, Net Business, and Teleopolis. Vita-More is the author of the Transhuman Statement (1983), producer and host of “Transcentury Update” (1987-1994), and the founder of Transhumanists Arts, Sciences & Culture (1991) and H+ Lab (2005). As the former President of Extropy Institute (2002-2005), she is currently on the Board of Directors for Humanity+, Fellow at Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Advisor of the Singularity University, Lifeboat Foundation, Alcor Life Extension Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at 21st Century Medicine.

TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.

Register now

post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.

English summary: The relationship between man and technology. An analysis of the changing relationship between man and technology, and its evolution in the post-human age. Cyborgs, non-human intelligences, clones, avatars and mutant identities challenge traditional anthropological and epistemological frameworks..

Il rapporto tra l’uomo e la tecnologia

Il rapporto tra l’uomo e la tecnologia ha subito un profondo mutamento nel XX secolo ma anche il concetto di natura ha visto numerosi slittamenti di significato, a tal punto che oggi molti autori mettono in discussione la dicotomia naturale/artificiale. Rispetto alla definizione dei predicati umani si è passati da una lettura autarchica, le qualità umane come emanazione dell’uomo, a una ibridativa, le qualità umane come risultato di processi ospitali del non-umano, con una metamorfosi profonda delle coordinate interpretative dell’ontopoiesi.

Secondo questo mutamento di paradigma, definibile come postumanistico, le qualità umane sono il frutto di un processo decentrativo rispetto alla prospettiva filogenetica e non di un’autoreferenzialità antropocentrica. Per questo le alterità non umane vengono tratteggiate come partner co-fattoriali, rigettando ogni pretesa autofondativa dei predicati umani.

Termini come cyborg, intelligenze non umane, clone, avatar, identità mutante mettono a dura prova le tradizionali coordinate antropologiche e le cornici epistemologiche chiamate a interpretarli. Ci troviamo di fronte a una profonda rivoluzione culturale capace di affascinare taluni e atterrire altri, che richiede però un’attenta riflessione nei suoi prospetti paradigmatici e nei suoi innumerevoli risvolti.

Roberto Marchesini is a well known Italian biologist and epistemologist. He is the author of one of the first books on transhumanism published in Italy: Post-human (Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). A lecturer in several Universities, Marchesini is the President of the Italian Society of Applied Behavioral Sciences and the Director of the School of Human-Animal Interaction.

TransVision 2010 è un evento transumanista globale che avrà luogo il 22, 23 e 24 Ottobre 2010 a Milano, con varie possibilità di accesso remoto online. Sarà un intenso, rapido e appassionante percorso nel pensiero transumanista contemporaneo, le tecnologie in via di sviluppo, e quelle più visionarie basate su conquiste scientifiche ancora lontane. La conferenza, che avrà luogo da venerdì 22 a domenica 24 di Ottobre alla Sala Carmagnola dell’ Hotel dei Cavalieri a Milano, esplorerà le tendenze scientifiche, tecnologiche, culturali, artistiche e sociali che promettono di cambiare il nostro mondo al di là di ogni aspettativa e potrebbero risultare in una “Singolarità” in solo poche decine di anni.

Iscriviti adesso!

Ti invitiamo inoltre afare segnalazioni a Twitter, i tuoi blog e siti web, e aggiungere il tuo nome alla pagina TransVision 2010 su Facebook.

Online conferences 2.0

One problem with conferences is that participating costs money and time. Today many conferences offer live video streams of all talks and discussion, which is very important for those who cannot attend physically. Some recent conferences like the ASIM 2010 Conference in San Francisco (satellite to the Singularity Summit 2010) have offered fully interactive remote participation with multi-user video, audio, text and document sharing (“mixed-reality”).

Mixed-reality via modern telepresence technology permits opening conferences to remote participants by merging on-site and remote participants in one virtual group. The 2-way video and audio link enables each participant, on-site or remote, to be seen and heard by all other participants, on-site or remote. Remote speakers and attendees are able to actively participate, follow the talks via interactive video streaming, ask questions to the speakers, contribute to the discussion, and give talks themselves. Of course, modern telepresence technology permits also online-only “conferences 2.0″, and I think this is an important trend. Going back to “one problem with conferences is that participating costs money and time“, it is evident that online conferences 2.0 permit saving a lot of money and time, thus enabling more people to participate in cultural acceleration.

I will present the teleXLR8 project, recently covered by Hypergrid Business, one of the best online magazines focused on professional applications of virtual reality, “as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience.” See also “teleXLR8 Project News – a telepresence community for cultural acceleration“, our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine.

Giulio Prisco is a physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. In 2002-2008 he served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus, of which he was Executive Director, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and the Italian Transhumanist Association.

TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.

Register now

post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.