"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition." Isaac Asimov
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Milan Ćirković is Senior Research Associate at the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and Assistant Professor of the Department of Physics at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia and Montenegro. Milan’s interests include astrobiology and SETI studies, the evolution of galaxies and baryonic dark matter, the philosophy of science (especially philosophy of cosmology and quantum mechanics), future studies (in particular related to existential risks and transhumanism), science fiction, and the history of physical sciences. Milan is co-editor with IEET Chair Nick Bostrom of the 2008 volume Global Catastrophic Risks from Oxford University Press.
Susan Schneider is Assistant professor for the Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania and an Affiliated Faculty Member at the Institutes for Research in Cognitive Science and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She focuses on issues involving the philosophy of cognitive science and, in particular, the plausibility of computational theories of mind and theoretical issues in artificial intelligence. She also has authored numerous articles in metaphysics.
Nathan Cravens is a founder and organizer of the Effortless Economy Institute, a think tank that tracks the evolution of automation technologies and how they have, are, and will likely affect economic, social, and ethical beliefs and behaviors.
Other than analysis, Nathan is also building ethical models and will make proposals for more practical and mutually beneficial ways of living in anticipation of more advanced productive tools.
Akansha Bhargava is an undergraduate student at University of Wisconsin- Madison majoring in genetics and philosophy. She is currently completing her senior thesis on Alexander’s disease at the Waisman Center. Akansha has recently begun pursuing an interest in bioethics through science writing.
Ben Goertzel (goertzel.org) is founder and CEO of two computer science firms Novamente LLC (novamente.net) and Biomind LLC (biomind.com), and of the non-profit Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute (agiri.org). He has served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand. He is author of two books focused on the future of technology and society Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum, 2001) and The Path to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006). He serves as Director of Research for the Singularity Institute for AI.
Mike Polyakov is a political theory graduate student at UC Berkeley. With a prior background in computer science, he is interested in the future role of technology in politics and of politics in technology. In the near future he plans to investigate topics like the ethics of human genetic engineering; morality, ethics and politics in virtual worlds; and the potential for a technology-driven shift from an economy of scarcity to one of plenty.
Ilia Stambler is a scientific writer at the Biophysical Schottenstein Center for the Research and Technology of the Cellome, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He studied biomedical engineering in Moscow Polytechnical Institute, biology at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and has an MA in English literature from Bar-Ilan University. Ilia is currently a PhD Candidate at the Department of Science, Technology and Society, Bar-Ilan University. His thesis subject, and his main interest, is the History of Life-extensionism in the 20th Century. He speaks Hebrew, English, Russian, German and Yiddish. He is active in the Israeli chapter of the Humanity Plus.
Priyamvada Sivasubramanian has a Masters in Economics from Stella Maris College, India, a Masters in Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, India and an MBA from the Great Lakes Institute of Management, India. She is a freelance journalist and the chief editor of ‘Gravity’ (a business journal).
Athena Andreadis is an Associate Professor of Cell Biology at the Shriver Center for Mental Retardation at University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the author of To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek. She studies the gene regulatory mechanism known as alternative splicing. Athena writes on science and science fiction for The Harvard Review among other publications, while writing her own SF at the site Starship Reckless which she founded.
John LaRocco is a biomedical engineering student in New Jersey. A writer in his free time, Mr. LaRocco also plans to go into neuroprosethics after finishing his undergrad degree. He is also in the process of forming a new organization, Symbiotry International, with a technoprogressive bent.
Steve Windmueller is an IT programmer with a BS in Computer Science and Math. He is interested in technology (computer science, astronomy, nanotechnology, AI, alife, etc.) and especially in life extension. He is working on a volunteer project for the Methuselah Foundation, is a member of the Humanity Plus, and spends time in the self-study of biology.
V.R.Manoj is a Research Scholar (Doctoral Student) at the Centre for Environmental Studies, Anna University, India. His area of research is biological wastewater treatment. He is a postgraduate in Microbiology and is also qualified in Bioinformatics, Cell culture and Plant tissue culture. Manoj is a founding member of the Indian chapter of the WTA and is currently the Organizational Director for the Second Life chapter of the WTA. Amongst others, he is a member of the Microbiologists Association of India and of the All India Bioethics Association. His specific interests in Transhumanism range from Cyborgs and Metaverses to the Environmental and the Spiritual aspects.
Edward Miller is a student at Monmouth College. He is the transnational organizer for the Transhumanist Student Network. He is a passionate advocate of Open Source development models. His blog, EmbraceUnity, deals with democracy, humanism, and sustainable development.
Kristi Scott is a Master of Liberal Studies student and an Institutional Research Associate for Assessment at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, IN. Her focus is on Advertising, Mass Communication and society, with a special interest in transhumanism, popular culture and science. Kristi is a freelance writer for Evansville Living magazine. She is also a member of the Women’s Bioethics Project and the Junior League of Evansville.
William Sims Bainbridge Ph.D. is a prolific and influential sociologist of religion, science and popular culture. Dr. Bainbridge serves as co-director of Human-Centered Computing at the NSF and has recently taught sociology and computational social science at George Mason University. In 1976 he published his first book The Spaceflight Revolution, which examined the push for space exploration in the 1960s. He then went on to publish Satan’s Power, which described several years of infiltration of the Process Church, a religious cult related to Scientology. In the last thirty years, Bainbridge has published more than a dozen more books dealing with space, religion, and psychology. Dr. Bainbridge’s long-standing interest in “personality capture,” using extensive personality surveys to record individual personalities in software, is reflected in works such as Experiments in Psychology (1986) which included cutting-edge psychology experimentation software written by Bainbridge.
Dr. Bainbridge’s two most recent books are God from the Machine (2006) and The Secular Abyss (2007). Dr. Bainbridge has published over 200 articles and essays for various journals and encyclopedias.
Anne Corwin served as an intern with the IEET in 2006 and 2007. She is an engineer and technoprogressive activist in California. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Humanity Plus, and is active in the longevity movement through the Methuselah Foundation and in the neurodiversity movement addressing issues along the autism spectrum. Ms. Corwin writes the blog Existence is Wonderful and produces a related podcast.
Linda MacDonald Glenn is a bioethicist, healthcare educator, lecturer, consultant and attorney. Her extensive experience and passion for the issues facing the legal, nursing, and healthcare professions make her a compelling and thought-provoking lecturer.
Formerly a fellow with the Institute of Ethics of the American Medical Association, and current Women’s Bioethics Project Scholar, Linda Macdonald Glenn’s research encompasses the legal, ethical, and social impact of emerging technologies and evolving notions of personhood.
Linda currently holds faculty appointments at the University Of Vermont College Of Nursing and Health Sciences, Department of Medical Laboratory and Radiation Sciences, and the University of Sciences in Philadelphia, Department of Biomedical Writing. An active lecturer, Linda has spoken at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Loyola University at Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical School and various law schools. She has also addressed numerous public and professional groups internationally.
Prior to returning to an academic setting, Linda MacDonald Glenn consulted and practiced as a trial attorney with an emphasis in patient advocacy, bioethical and biotechnology issues, end of life decision-making, reproductive rights, genetics, neuroethics, parental/biological issues (aka nature vs. nurture), and animal rights. She was the lead attorney in several precedent-setting bioethics legal cases.
Linda has advised governmental leaders and agencies, and published numerous articles in professional journals. Her most recent articles include “To Sail Beyond the Sunset: Navigating the Uncharted Territory of Converging Technologies” in the Fall 2005 ASBH exchange and “Keeping An Open Mind: What Legal Safeguards are needed?” in the recent American Journal of Bioethics on Neuroethics (March/April 2005).
In addition to her current educational, lecture and consultation work, Linda is writing several articles regarding evolving notions of personhood and maintains an ongoing blog (http://www.womensbioethics.blogspot.com) as a Women’s Bioethics Project Scholar.
Jonathan Pfeiffer is an undergraduate at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California. His concentration began in biomedical engineering. Later, however, he changed his focus to environmental science, political science, and ethics.
Vladimir De Thézier is a social entrepreneur and creative professional. He served as Special Projects Manager for the IEET from January 2006 to December 2007. He writes the technoscience-focused progressive blog Vangarde.
De Thézier is currently developing Technoliberation, a project which supports conversation, collaboration, organization, and debate among liberal, social, and radical democrats from around the world all of whom share the sense that emerging, converging, disruptive global technological developments threaten unprecedented harm while they promise unprecedented emancipation for humanity. He wants to stimulate citizens to think about the ways in which technology provokes us to rethink and reimagine the left wing of the possible.
Martine Rothblatt is responsible for launching several satellite communications companies, including the first nationwide vehicle location system (Geostar, 1983), the first private international spacecom project (PanAmSat, 1984), the first global satellite radio network (WorldSpace, 1990), and the first non-geostationary satellite-to-car broadcasting system (Sirius, 1990). As an attorney-entrepreneur she was also responsible for leading the efforts to obtain worldwide approval, via new international treaties, of satellite orbit/spectrum allocations for space-based navigation services (1987) and for direct-to-person satellite radio transmissions (1992). In the 1990s Dr. Rothblatt entered the life sciences field by leading the International Bar Association’s project to develop a draft Human Genome Treaty for the United Nations (submitted in 1999), and by founding a biotechnology company, United Therapeutics (1996). Dr. Rothblatt is the author of books on satellite communications technology (Radiodetermination Satellite Services and Standards, Artech, 1987), gender freedom (Apartheid of Sex, Crown, 1995), genomics (Unzipped Genes, Temple University Press, 1997) and xenotransplantation (Your Life or Mine, Ashgate House, 2003). She is also cyberscripted and produced one of the first cybermuseums, the World Against Racism Museum.
Peter Houghton was a friend and advisor to the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies from its inception to his death in 2007. Peter had worked in non-profit advocacy for many years. He was Director of the Birmingham Settlement where he founded Britain’s first money advice centre and worked with adolescents in trouble. He founded The National Association of the Childless in the UK. After becoming the first recipient of an electric heart pump he worked tirelessly on behalf of the needs of people with heart disease and needing artificial organs by founding and raising monies for the Artificial Heart Foundation and the Extralife Society. He was the author of On Death, Dying and Not Dying and The World Within Me: A Personal Journey to Spiritual Understanding.
From Wikipedia:
Peter Houghton (died November 25, 2007), was the longest surviving artificial heart transplant patient in the UK.
Houghton was implanted with a Jarvik 2000 heart pump at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK, on 20 June 2000 due to severe heart failure. Since the operation, the left ventricular assist device has worked continuously supporting his heart, breaking the previous duration record on 11 August 2004 at 1,513 days.
The record represents the survival of both the person and the artificial heart. A few individuals have lived longer than 1,512 days but with two artificial hearts, having the first surgically replaced due to failure or wear.
Houghton was the first person in the world to be given an artificial heart for permanent use rather than as a bridge to transplantation.
An educated psychotherapist, Houghton has written a book, “The World Within Me,” in which he contemplates how receiving the transplant challenges his devout Catholicism. He also reports that, ironically, the heart transplant has left him largely devoid of emotion.
He died on 25 November at Birmingham’s Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham. The cause of death was given as multiple organ failure.
A MAN who survived for 7½ years with an electric heart pump has paved the way for a mechanical alternative to heart transplants.
Peter Houghton, from Birmingham, had been given just six weeks to live when he agreed to the experimental operation in June 2000. His chance of survival was put at no higher than 50%. He recovered to lead an active life, and cardiologists are now demanding a full medical trial of pumps to help some of the thousands of patients who die prematurely from heart disease.
His death last week at the age of 68 coincided with the revelation that 70% of the 1,044 donor hearts offered for transplant last year were rejected by doctors because of “medical issues”. The number of heart transplants carried out each year has halved from about 300 in the mid1990s. Only 78 patients have been approved for the heart transplant waiting list.
Transplant surgery at the celebrated Papworth centre in Cambridgeshire was temporarily halted last month when seven out of 20 patients who received transplants in the past year died soon after surgery. An investigation could not establish a reason for the high failure rate.
After his operation, Houghton became a tireless charity worker. He travelled the world to publicise the artificial heart programme at the Radcliffe infirmary, Oxford, which had so benefited him, and took part in a sponsored 80-mile walk from Birmingham to Oxford to help to raise more than £1m. That money was used to fund six more heart pump implants in Oxford. He and his wife, Diane, had no children but helped to raise 13 foster children, some of whom were with him when he died.
Heart disease is Britain’s biggest killer, claiming 216,000 lives annually and costing an estimated £1.7 billion in treatment.
Advocates of heart pumps argue that they can be used to restore thousands of sick patients to a full and active life and are no more expensive than kidney dialysis. They cost £50,000, but the outlay is offset by the huge reduction in drugs and doctors’ time needed by patients with heart failure.
Only six other terminally ill British patients have been approved to receive the devices. Apart from Houghton, the longest survivor has been kept alive by the device for four years.
The technological expertise developed in Britain is now being rapidly taken up elsewhere. Electric heart pump programmes have been set up in Berlin, Athens, Brussels and Caen in Normandy. The Berlin heart centre has implanted 81 devices, four of them in the past two months alone.
The US has become the world leader, implanting more than 1,000 in total, but many have been less effective than Houghton’s and have failed mechanically. America’s longest survivor was Sherri Selph, 54, from Alabama, who lived with an electric heart for seven years. Last year she was given a heart transplant.
Veronica Salpy Pamboukian, the cardiologist who runs the electric heart programme at Alabama University, where Selph was treated, acknowledged that heart pumps were on track to take over from transplant organs as the treatment of choice. “Once we get 70% of patients surviving for two to five years, that will change things,” she said. “We are on the brink of opening the floodgates and being able to apply this technology to a much larger population.”
Houghton was well suited for his role as a medical guinea pig.
A former social worker from South Africa, he had retrained as a psychotherapist and devoted his life to supporting the dying.
It was through this work that he met Rob George, a palliative care consultant, and the pair collaborated on a book called Healthy Dying. It was George who introduced him to the heart pump programme. “It is ironic that the first patient to live with an artificial heart was referred by a doctor specialising in care of the dying,” George said.
“Houghton was incredibly brave, but also quite philosophical. He was a committed Catholic, had last rites administered and was ready to take the risk of not waking up from the operation.” He delighted in showing people the power supply to the pump, which was plugged into a socket implanted in his skull, and the neat shoulder bag that carried his batteries.
Stephen Westaby, professor of biomedical science at Oxford, treated Houghton and the six other patients. He believes evidence from round the world now proves that heart pumps offer a realistic alternative to organ transplants.
Among a growing number of senior specialists who share his enthusiasm is Philip Poole-Wilson, professor of heart science at Imperial College, London. “There is an overwhelming need for rigorous trials to show clearly just how much benefit accrues from the use of these devices for lifetime treatment. Such a trial in the UK would bea fitting memorial to a brave, thoughtful and determined man like Houghton, and it is what he wanted,” he said.
Last year the Department of Health commissioned a cost-benefit analysis of heart pumps from Andrew Clegg of Southampton University’s health research department. He recommended a fully funded trial of their long-term use, but no decision has yet been taken.
An Ravelingien Ph.D. is an assistant researcher in bioethics at the Department of Philosophy, Ghent University. An has focused on various strategies meant to counter the organ shortage, such as transgenic xenograft organ transplants from pigs. Since January 2007, An has been employed as a research assistant on a new project that investigates the ethics of emerging neuroenhancement technology research and clinical trials. She also assists Johan Braeckman in teaching a course on Philosophical Anthropology.
Heather Bradshaw is working on a thesis on enhancement and disability at the Centre for Ethics in Medicine at the University of Bristol. She is a staffer at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford where she is currently managing the editing and publication of a collection of essays on wisdom in Western and East-Asian culture.
Heather has many contacts in the engineering industry and is involved in a project run by the IDEA-CETL centre at Leeds University to develop case studies in engineering ethics.
She is a member of the BSFA, and of the Northampton Science Fiction Writers’ group led by Ian Watson. Heather has worked on science fiction Conventions and a science fiction anthology, Timepieces, as well as submitting her own fiction to the group (see http://www.newconpress.com)
Michael Yin Jin is an IEET intern, a medical student, the founder of the Stanford Transhumanism Association. As was Ethics and Policy Editor of the Stanford Scientific Review , and the Stanford Bioscience Quarterly. Michael served as an editorial intern with the Journal of Evolution and Technology.
Ben Hyink is the founder and past Chair of the Transhumanist Student Network. He was the recipient of the 2007 JBS Haldane award in recognition of his accomplishments as a transhumanist organizer.
Dale Carrico Ph.D. was an IEET fellow from 2004 to 2008. He is a lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley, from which he received his PhD. in 2005, and is also a member of the visiting faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute. He is currently adapting his dissertation into a book, Pancryptics: Technological Transformations of the Subject of Privacy. He organized the 13th Annual Boundaries in Question Conference in March 2004, on the topic "New Feminist Perspectives on Biotechnology and Bioethics,” and was conference chair of the IEET conference on “Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights” to be held at Stanford University Law School, May 26-28, 2006.
Russell Blackford PhD LLB, an attorney, science fiction author and critic, philosopher, and public intellectual, lives in Melbourne, Australia. Russell is currently completing a second Ph.D. (in Philosophy) and teaches in the School of Philosophy and Bioethics at Monash University. He writes frequently on issues related to emerging technology, including the ethics and regulation of cloning, stem cell research, and human enhancement. His work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including Australian Law Review, Cosmos, Foundation, Journal of Law and Medicine, Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of Medical Ethics, Meanjin, Monash Bioethics Review, New York Review of Science Fiction, Quadrant, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Sudies, and Westerly. He has taught English literature at Monash, and worked in labour relations and professional legal practice. With Van Ikin and Sean McMullen, he wrote Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction.
Aubrey de Grey Ph.D. is a biogerontologist, creator of the Methuselah Mouse prize, and Chairman and Chief Science Officer of the Methuselah Foundation. He designs interventions to reverse the cellular and molecular changes that accumulate with age and reduce remaining life expectancy. He has coined the term “strategies for engineered negligible senescence” (SENS) to describe these interventions, which he argues are the only feasible way to extend human lifespan by more than a decade. He has published widely on SENS. Aubrey is the co-founder and chief scientist of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, a contest designed to accelerate research into effective life extension interventions by awarding prizes to researchers who extend the lifespan of mice to unprecedented lengths. Aubrey serves as editor-in-chief of Rejuvenation Research.
Jamais Cascio writes about the intersection of emerging technologies and cultural transformation, and specializes in the design and creation of plausible scenarios of the future. His work focuses on the relationships between disparate forces and systems, and the importance of long-term, systemic thinking, particularly regarding the environment and technological development. In 2003, he co-founded WorldChanging.com, the award-winning website dedicated to finding and calling attention to models, tools and ideas for building a “bright green” future. His articles at WorldChanging covered topics including energy and the environment, global development, open source technologies, and catalysts for social change.
Cascio speaks about future scenarios around the world at venues such as the FuturShow 3000 in Bologna, Italy, and the TED 2006 conference in Monterey, California. His essays about technology and society have appeared in a variety of publications, including Wired, Salon and Time. Cascio has worked on a number of television and film projects, and designed the science fiction game settings Transhuman Space: Broken Dreams and Transhuman Space: Toxic Memes, exploring explore issues of posthumanity, intellectual property, sapient AI, nanotechnology, and bioengineering. Jamais has degrees in Anthropology, History and Political Science.
Mike Treder is the Executive Director of the non-profit Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, an organization working to raise awareness of the issues presented by advanced nanotechnology. Mr. Treder is a professional writer, speaker, and activist with a background in technology and communications company management. He attended the University of Washington in Seattle, majoring in Biology. As an accomplished presenter on the societal implications of emerging technologies, Mike has addressed conferences and groups around the world, including in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, New Zealand and Brazil. Mike lives in New York City. His other affiliations include:
Scientific Advisory Board, Lifeboat Foundation
Advisory Board, Global Risks Council
Consultant, Future Technologies Advisory Group
Honorary Member, Federation of American Scientists
Ramez Naam is the author of More than Human: How Technology Will Transform Us and Why We Should Embrace It, which offers a tour of new technologies and makes a case for embracing human enhancement, showing readers how new technologies are powerful new tools in humanity’s quest to improve ourselves, our offspring and our world. Naam is a professional technologist who helped create two of the most widely used pieces of software in the world: Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook. He is currently the CEO of Apex Nanotechnologies, which develops software for nanotechnology researchers. He also serves on the advisory board of the Institute for Accelerating Change, is a Senior Associate of the Foresight Institute and is a member of the World Future Society. He is the recipient of the 2005 H. G. Wells Award for Contributions to Transhumanism.
Riccardo Campa is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cracow, where he teaches “sociology of science and technology” and “sociology and psychology of terrorism”. He is the author of Epistemological Dimensions of Robert Merton’s Sociology and Il filosofo è nudo. He received a Ph.D. in Sociology at the Nicholas Copernicus University of Torun (Poland), and two Masters degrees, in Political Sciences and Philosophy, at the University of Bologna (Italy). Before starting his academic career, Campa served as Lieutenant of the police corp “Guardia di Finanza”, investigating especially organized crime. Afterwards, he worked as a journalist for newspaper “La Voce di Mantova” and newsmagazine “Il Mondo”. In the academic year 2004-2005 he won a fellowship offered by NATO to research about ethical aspects of scientific and technological development. Presently, he writes regularly for the socialist journal ”MondOperaio”. He is the founder and the president of the Italian Transhumanist Association. He is also a musician who has recorded more than fifteen albums as a solo artist and with his bands.
Marcelo Rinesi is the joint Assistant Director of the IEET and the Humanity Plus. Mr. Rinesi is an IT consultant and writer based in Buenos Aires. He works with the Future Technologies Advisory Group and the Buenos Aires transhumanist group. Mr. Rinesi has published articles related to technology, business and culture in Wired, Computer Bits, The Straits Times, Canada’s Your Workplace and Student Traveler. Mr. Rinesi is a student of mathematics at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, where he also teaches and tutors in math.
James Hughes Ph.D., the IEET Executive Director, is a bioethicist and sociologist at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut where he teaches Health Policy and serves as Associate Director of Institutional Research and Planning. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, where he also taught bioethics at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Dr. Hughes is author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future , and is working on a second book tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha. Since 1999 he has produced a syndicated weekly radio program, Changesurfer Radio.
Dr. Hughes was briefly ordained as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka in 1984 while working for the Buddhist development organization Sarvodaya Shramadana. He founded and edited the international newsletter Doctor-Patient Studies (1991-1995) which reviewed research on the doctor-patient relationship, the focus of his doctoral research. He also edited the Chicago student newspaper Grey City Journal, the national student magazine The Activist, and the international ‘zine EcoSocialist Review.
He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and the Working Group on Ethics and Technology at Yale University.
Dr. Hughes speaks on medical ethics, health care policy and future studies worldwide, and appears often radio and television.
Dr. Hughes is available for media interviews.
Office tel: 860-297-2376, 860-428-1837
E-mail: director at ieet.org
Skype: citizencyborg
George Dvorsky serves on the Board of Directors for the IEET. George is Canada’s leading agenda-driven futurist/activist and an award winning blogger, George writes and speaks widely about the impacts of cutting-edge science and technology. He is the Director of Operations for Commune Media, an advertising and marketing firm that specializes in marketing science. He is the co-founder and president of the Toronto Transhumanist Association and served on the Board of Directors for the Humanity Plus from 2004-06. George was the organizing chair for TransVision 2004, an international conference addressing the scientific, political and social issues surrounding human biotechnology. George has been interviewed by such publications as The Guardian, the BBC, Radio Free Europe, and Beliefnet. He made an appearance on the CBC’s The Hour and has been profiled in NOW and This Magazine. He has also written for such publications as The Humanist, Canadian Freethinker, Cryonics Magazine and various Thomson & Gale university texts. He is also an accomplished music performer, composer and recording engineer.
Mike LaTorra writes and teaches in Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA, He is author of A Warrior Blends with Life: A Modern Tao. He serves as President of the Daibutsuji Zen Temple and on the Board of Directors of the IEET and the Humanity Plus.
Giulio Prisco is a former physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. Giulio is based in Madrid, Spain, where he runs the consulting company metafuturing and contributes to the science and technology online magazine Tendencias 21. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Humanity Plus, of which he is Executive Director, and on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association. He is often in Italy and Hungary. You can find more about Giulio at his blog and home page. See also the FutureTag and uvvy websites.
Mark Walker Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at New Mexico State University, where he occupies the Richard L. Hedden Endowed Chair. He serves on the Board of Directors of the IEET, on the editorial board of the Journal of Evolution and Technology, and served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus from 2002 to 2006. He founded Permanent End International (2004-2007), a nonprofit organization that promoted poverty reduction through aquaculture. Dr. Walker’s teaching and research interests include ethics, epistemology, philosophy of religion and philosophy of science. His current primary research interest is in ethical issues arising out of emerging technologies, e.g., genetic engineering, advanced pharmacology, artificial intelligence research and nanotechnology.
Wrye Sententia is director of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE), a nonprofit research, policy, and public education center working to advance and protect freedom of thought into the 21st century. Dr. Sententia has guided the CCLE in sponsoring the National Science Foundation’s initiatives aimed at “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance.” In 2002, Sententia provided comments to the appointed President’s Council on Bioethics in Washington D.C., on the topic of cognitive enhancement technologies and in October 2004 debated members of the Council on the democratic values of the US Declaration of Independence in relation to emergent enhancement biotechnologies and human freedom.
Wrye is a Postdoctoral Lecturer, at the University of California, Davis and serves on the technology ethics advisory board for the Nanoethics Group. In addition to her nonprofit work on the policy and ethics of freedom of thought in an age of neurotechnology, she currently teaches both for the UC Davis Technocultural Studies Program and the University Writing Program. With Lexington Press, she will publish an academic book that considers cyberpunk science fiction and the impact of novel media, medicine, and technology on freedom of thought.
Douglas Rushkoff is author of, among his ten books, Playing the Future, Open Source Democracy and Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy, the graphic novel, Club Zero-G and the comic book series Testament. He has written and hosted two award-winning Frontline documentaries - "The Merchants of Cool," which looked at the influence of corporations on youth culture, and "The Persuaders," about the cluttered landscape of marketing, and new efforts to overcome consumer resistance. Rushkoff’s commentaries air on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s All Things Considered, and have appeared in publications from The New York Times to Time magazine. His column on cyberculture is distributed globally through the New York Times Syndicate. He is Advisor to the United Nations Commission on World Culture, on the Board of Directors of the Media Ecology Association, The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and was a founding member of Technorealism. He has been awarded Senior Fellowships by the Markle Foundation and the Center for Global Communications Fellow of the International University of Japan. He regularly appears on TV shows from NBC Nightly News to Larry King and Bill Maher. He developed the Electronic Oracle software series for HarperCollins Interactive.
Marshall Brain is the author of The Day You Discard Your Body, Manna and the founder of HowStuffWorks.com. He is known for his book for teenagers entitled The Teenager’s Guide to the Real World. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree in computer science from North Carolina State University. Before founding HowStuffWorks, Marshall taught in the computer science department at NCSU and ran a software training and consulting company.
Andy Miah is Reader in New Media & Bioethics at the University of the West of Scotland, UK. His research is informed by an interest in applied philosophy, technology, and culture and he has recently published in The Lancet, the Journal of Medical Ethics, and the Journal of International Biotechnology Law. Andy has also written for leading newspapers, including The Observer and the Times Higher Education Supplement. His major publications include Genetically Modified Athletes (2004) and The Medicalization of Cyberspace (2008). He is currently preparing a book title CyberSport: Digital Games, Ethics & Cultures (The MIT Press, 2007). He is author of posthumanism.org.uk, serves on the editorial board member for Genomics, Society & Policy, Health Care Analysis and is Associate Editor for New Media and Communications Technologies for Studies in Ethics, Law and Technology. He is also an expert member of the European Union programme NanoBio-RAISE.
Nick Bostrom Ph.D. is a Professor of Applied Ethics at Oxford University, and the Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute. Professor Bostrom co-founded the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in 2005 and serves as Chair of its Board of Directors. Professor Bostrom also co-founded the Humanity Plus (Humanity Plus) in 1998 and currently serves on its Board of Directors as founding chair. Professor Bostrom is a frequent spokesperson and commentator in the media, and has consulted for the President’s Council on Bioethics (USA), the Central Intelligence Agency (USA), the European Commission, and the European Group on Ethics (Brussels), among many groups. Dr. Bostrom has a background in cosmology, computational neuroscience, mathematical logic, philosophy, and artificial intelligence, and his research addresses the philosophy of science, probability theory, and the ethical and strategic implications of emerging and future technologies. He is author of the book Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy (Routledge, New York, 2002), and has co-edited the book Global Catastrophic Risks (Oxford University Press, 2008) with Milan Cirkovic, and Human Enhancement (Oxford University Press, 2009) with Julian Savulescu.
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