[extropy-chat] Corvallis Gazette-Times article on transhumanism

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

This Corvallis Gazette-Times article on
transhumanism<http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2005/06/26/news/nation/nat05.txt>is
an example of good media coverage. Facts, ideas, and the reader is
left
free to make up her mind.
HARTFORD, Conn. - Sitting in his office at Trinity College, James Hughes 
explains his vision of a family gathering a couple of hundred years from 
now: One family member is a cyborg, another is outfitted with gills for 
living underwater. Yet another has been modified to live in a vacuum.
"But they will all consider themselves as descendants of humanity,'' he 
says.
As executive director of the World Transhumanist Association, he's one of 
the leaders in a movement that sees, in the next 50 years, a world where 
flesh fuses with mechanics and brains with circuitry. He recently published 
"Citizen Cyborg'' (Westview Press, $26.95), a book that has made waves in 
academic circles and urges the need to prepare for this future.
Transhumanism, a theory that has been kicking around for a few decades, 
envisions a "post-human'' phase where technology will bring us beyond human 
capabilities. Intelligence-boosting brain chips, extended life spans and 
even immortality are all part of this vision. It's an idea that covers a lot 
of ground. Walking canes and eyeglasses are a basic form of transhumanism. 
And then there's uploading one's mind and living as sheer consciousness on a 
computer.
The [World Transhumanist Association <http://transhumanism.org/>] was 
founded in 1997 by Nick Bostrom while he was a philosophy professor at Yale. 
Hughes says it has more than 30 chapters worldwide, including recent 
additions in Somalia and Uganda.
While transhumanism was long relegated to the scientific fringe, it has 
edged closer to the mainstream in the past few years.
"I believe part of it is that these technological possibilities, five or 10 
years ago, seemed like science fiction,'' says Bostrom, now director
of the Future
of Humanity Institute at Oxford University <http://www.oxfhi.ox.ac.uk/>.
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