[ExI] Natasha's brand new doctorate

[Adrian Tymes]

Congrats!

What field is the PhD officially in?
On Jul 12, 2012 4:19 PM, "Max More" <max at maxmore.com> wrote:

> Hello all.
>
> I want to make sure that all (especially you old-timers) here know that
> one of the longest-term subscribers (who also happens to be my wife) is a
> newly-minted PhD.
>
> Despite full-time work and numerous other activities, Natasha pushed on
> and completed her doctoral work, capped off with a dissertation:
>
> “Life Expansion: Toward an Artistic, Design-Based Theory of the Transhuman
> / Posthuman”
>
> Natasha flew to England to defend her dissertation last week. Her defense
> on July 5 was a thorough success!
>
> She is now the very well-deserved possessor of a doctorate from Great
> Britain’s University of Plymouth's Science, Technology Research Centre,
> School of Media Arts and Design.
>
> Here’s the abstract:
>
> Abstract:
> The thesis’ study of life expansion proposes a framework for artistic,
> design-based approaches concerned with prolonging human life and sustaining
> personal identity. To delineate the topic: life expansion means increasing
> the length of time a person is alive and diversifying the matter in which a
> person exists. For human life, the length of time is bounded by a single
> century and its matter is tied to biology. Life expansion is located in the
> domain of human enhancement, distinctly linked to technological interfaces
> with biology.
>         The thesis identifies human-computer interaction and the potential
> of emerging and speculative technologies as seeding the promulgation of
> human enhancement that approach life expansion. In doing so, the thesis
> constructs an inquiry into historical and current attempts to append human
> physiology and intervene with its mortality. By encountering emerging and
> speculative technologies for prolonging life and sustaining personal
> identity as possible media for artistic, design-based approaches to human
> enhancement, a new axis is sought that identifies the transhuman and
> posthuman as conceptual paradigms for life expansion.
>         The thesis asks: What are the required conditions that enable
> artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement that explicitly
> pursue extending human life? This question centers on the potential of the
> study’s proposed enhancement technologies in their relationship to life,
> death, and the human condition. Notably, the thesis investigates artistic
> approaches, as distinct from those of the natural sciences, and the borders
> that need to be mediated between them.
>         The study navigates between the domains of life extension, art and
> design, technology, and philosophy in forming the framework for a theory of
> life expansion. The critical approach seeks to uncover invisible borders
> between these interconnecting forces by bringing to light issues of
> sustaining life and personal identity, ethical concerns, including
> morphological freedom and extinction risk. Such issues relate to the
> thesis’ interest in life expansion and the use emerging and speculative
> technologies.
>         The study takes on a triad approach in its investigation:
> qualitative interviews with experts of the emerging and speculative
> technologies; field studies encountering research centers of such
> technologies; and an artistic, autopoietic process that explores the
> heuristics of life expansion. This investigation forms an integrative view
> of the human use of technology and its melioristic aim. The outcome of the
> research is a theoretical framework for further research in artistic
> approaches to life expansion.
>
> I’m very proud of what Natasha has accomplished. This was a highly unusual
> topic that had to overcome some significant academic barriers.
>
> Onward!
>
> --Max
>
>
>
> --
> Max More, PhD
> Strategic Philosopher
> Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader*
> CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation
> 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110
> Scottsdale, AZ 85260
> 480/905-1906 ext 113
>
>
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>
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