How Many Transhumanists Does it Take . . . ?

by Michael Anissimov; Michael is a futurist who writes about molecular manufacturing and artifical general intelligence. He runs a blog at Accelerating Future.

I logged into the Second Life server at about midnight last Wednesday. It was already 10 am the next day in Helsinki, and the Transvision conference, the World Transhumanist Association’s virtual gathering, was in full swing.

A global organization, the WTA has held conferences in extremely diverse locales: Stockholm, London, Berlin, Yale University, Toronto, Caracas, and now Helsinki. Previously I had made it to the one at Yale, and this year, being on a limited budget, my only option was attending the virtual conference.

I was pleasantly surprised at how interconnected the Second Life conference was with the real world. In the virtual conference room, there were dozens of seats. What began with only a few people ballooned, at times, with almost twenty virtual attendees.

There were two large screens on the walls of the virtual conference room that broadcasted the speakers' talks directly from Helsinki in real time. The Second Life environment was also linked to an IRC chat room, as well as a screen on the wall in Helsinki, so text appeared for everyone to see. There was also an auxiliary webcast available through a browser window, in case the streaming video in Second Life didn’t work out.

Because my night was Helsinki's morning, I could only stay awake until 4 am or so to catch a couple of the after-lunch talks. One talk by David Wood of Symbian focused on the future of cell phones. He introduced a new, entirely waterproof Japanese phone. In the virtual conference room, I made an offhanded comment about wanting a waterproof laptop so I could sit in the bath all day and do my work.

Much to my surprise, Aubrey de Grey, a conference attendee, saw my question on the screen and asked it aloud for me at the end of the talk! It really makes you think when your hear people say "It's just the Internet," because my comments in the virtual environment had an immediate effect in the real world, before an audience of about one hundred people.

I'm not sure how many other conferences worldwide have implemented this real/virtual synergy in the way that the technically-adept folks in Helsinki did. At the beginning of the conference, there were some issues with communication between the IRC chat room and the Second Life conference room, but they were solved with help from Canadian programmer David McFadzean.

I walked away from the whole experience happy with the way that transhumanists today are taking full advantage of available technology while discussing future technologies that will give us even more options for freedom and interconnectedness. It's a global movement, so it made sense that there was global participation in the conference!

(Conference image courtesy of Michael Anissimov.)