Robert J. Bradbury <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com> wrote:
> Just to satisfy my curiosity are all of the transhumanist documents
Take a look at <URL:http://www.aleph.se/>. Actually, Aleph have
> in Sweeden in English?
I think I can state with a high degree of confidence that Aleph/STHF are the most advanced of the national transhumanist associations in Europe.
> What about the German efforts?
Well, I just got back from the first in-the-flesh gathering of De:Trans (German Society for Transhumanism) we held this weekend. All previous meetings, including the formal founding session, had taken place on IRC.
At Extro 4 I decided not to give a presentation of De:Trans because there was (and still is) little to report. After several months of deliberations and struggling with red tape, the association has been formally founded earlier this year. We're officially registered in Berlin. The paperwork is mostly completed, there only remains some wrestling with the authorities regarding our tax status.
Also, De:Trans now finally has an official web presence at <URL:http://www.transhumanismus.de/>. There are plans to create both a member-only and a public mailing list. So far, discussions have been hosted on my general German language mailing list for transhumanism, trans-de (at majordomo@lists.rhein-neckar.de).
There is a weekly IRC meeting, every Sunday at 21:00 CE(S)T, channel #detrans on irc.fu-berlin.de, which tends to last for about an hour. It has proven largely ineffective as a means of communication, but it serves nicely to keep the social network alive.
Robert, you'll like hearing that one of De:Trans' pledged missions is to translate key documents of transhuman interest into German. A translation of the Extropian Principles is under final review, and there is a first draft of a translation of the Transhumanist FAQ.
It bears pointing out that translating is a difficult task. You need both a reasonable understanding of the source language (foreign language skills of the level acquired at school are usually not adequate) and high proficiency in the target language. The documents mentioned above pose the additional challenge that they are worded exceptionally carefully in the original.
-- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de