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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>>…</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Natasha Vita-More<br><br><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>I don’t know of an existing transhumanist wiki. Can you suggest on that is on “transhumanism”? <span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span></span><a href="http://www.natasha.cc/" target="_blank"><span style='color:windowtext'>Natasha Vita-More, PhD</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Funny aside: at the transhumanist schmooze this past weekend, I was out front meeting and greeting when two young ladies who I assumed were students, wandered in and asked if this was the humanities event. Apparently our H+ gathering was listed on one of the university event calendars as “Humanities plus.” It should come as no surprise that “humanities” students should show up, although I do not claim any expertise in recognizing a humanities student. That humanities business was something that went on over on the other end of campus, where they knew of such things at that bigshot artist from Italy, Michael Angelo and those sorts of cats. We engineering students didn’t really study humanities. We studied machinities. Had we been around at the writing of the Declaration of Independence, we would have worded it “When in the course of machine events, it becomes necessary for one network to dissolve it’s communication bandwidth…”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Had it been listed on that calendar as H+, we might have swept up some lost chemistry students wondering why we were having a conference on hydrons in acidic solutions, or physics students looking for the proton event.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='color:#1F497D'>In any case, these two lost humanities students showed up and so I attempted to channel Johnny Grigg, since he is the one among us who I nominate most likely to connect with normal people. I tried to explain transhumanism in fifty words or less (try that some time, to one of your neighbors) and invited them to listen to a talk. Unfortunately from the looks on their faces afterwards, I fear they came into the middle of one of the more hard core transhumanist presentations, not one suited to virgins, such as freezing heads or uploading our brains into a computer or something like that, a topic on which we here are perfectly comfortable, but would send the more ordinary types away in puzzled dismay or fleeing in terrified panic at our apparent collective insanity.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='color:#1F497D'>They wandered back out a few minutes later and I never saw them again. Conclusion: as hard as I may try, it is likely I will never attain the kind of human connectivity that comes naturally to our own Griggmeister. Johnny, you inspire me man. {8-]<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='color:#1F497D'>spike </span><o:p></o:p></p></div></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>