WTA Update 4
1 July 1999
Dear Member:
The second European transhumanist conference, TransVision99, took place in Stockholm a few weeks back - a welcomed opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with fellow transhumanists. We seem to get along well with each other. As is often the case with conferences, much of the action was between the presentations, or over dinner, or late in the night outside the prison gates. (The conference was held in Kumla Hotell, which retains many features of its former function as a prison.) One participant's account of the event is at http://maxm.normik.dk/tv99/html/postscript_maxm.htm.
If you're beginning to regret that you weren't there, it is still not
too late to register for EXTRO-4 in Berkeley, August 7-8! Several new
speakers have been confirmed and all indications are that it will be a
great event. More information is at
http://www.extropy.org/ex4/e4main.htm.
One of the practical issues discussed at TV99 was the need for a new moderated discussion forum. Max M. (the Dane, not Max More) announced a plan to create a transhumanist portal site that will support some form of filtered news groups. Alexander Bard discussed some thoughts he had of starting a moderated transhumanist mailinglist. The Extropy Institute is considering to replace or complement the present extropian list with a more ambitious implementation of their NodeNet idea, where different topics would be discussed in separate moderated discussion groups. After the summer we will have a clearer picture of what will come out of these efforts.
Next year's TransVision is preliminarily scheduled to take place in London.
The Journal of Transhumanism continues its efforts to promote transhumanist scholarship. Although no new papers have been published since the last update, several have been rejected and some are in the process of being refereed. Keep the submissions coming! In addition to the joy of contributing to human knowledge and building a reputation for yourself, there is also a pecuniary incentive: the WTA award of £5000, which is to be awarded for the best paper published in the JTH before 31 December 1999, provided candidates of sufficient merit are available.
The WTA keeps growing; we currently have about 650 members, compared to 466 on the 20th of February. This is good news, and in order to translate it into concrete advantages it would be good to form more local groups. If you are interested in doing that, try to get in touch with some other people in your area (maybe by looking at http://www.transhumanism.com/groups.htm), start meeting up occasionally, and take it from there.
Best wishes,
Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics