Each year on December 10th, International Human Rights Day, Terasem conducts a Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons. The event seeks to provide the public with informed perspectives regarding the legal rights and obligations of “futuristic persons” via VR events with expert presentations and discussions. Terasem hopes to facilitate development of

“a body of law covering the rights and obligations of entities that transcend, and yet encompass, conventional conceptions of humanness.”

 

It’s more and more evident that humanity and technology will co-evolve, with organic life enhanced by synthetic biology and artificial intelligence, and artificial life powered by mind grafts from human uploads, blending more and more until it will be impossible – and pointless – to tell which is which. The first generations of futuristic persons – sentient Artificial Intelligences (AIs), human mind uploads, and hybrids – are coming, and it’s important to prepare the way.

Current-generation virtual worlds like Second Life are, of course, very primitive compared with the future virtual worlds where many futuristic persons will live.  Next-generation platforms like Philip Rosedales High Fidelity and Linden Lab’s Project Sansar are coming in 2016 with support for immersive Virtual Reality (VR) headsets and interfaces, which is likely to trigger a new, massive wave of interest in virtual worlds. Come to the 2015 Colloquium in Second Life, and get ready for future Terasem events in next-generation virtual worlds.

The 2015 Colloquium will be held on Thursday, December 10, 2015, 10AM – 1PM PST / 1PM – 4PM EST / 6PM – 9PM GMT. Like other events sponsored by Terasem, the Colloquium is professionally organized by Terasem founder Martine Rothblatt and a team led by Loraine Rhodes.

The impressive list of speakers includes Zoltan Istvan, author of “The Transhumanist Wager” and Candidate for the US Presidency with the Transhumanist Party USA, which recently stirred controversies in the futurist community, and Jack Sarfatti, the maverick physicist featured in “How the Hippies Saved Physics”  – quantum physics and the psychedelic youth culture of the seventies rolled together, with a dazzle of faster-than-light communications and time travel via quantum weirdness.

We will post frequent updates with more detailed information, help for newcomers to Second Life, complete speakers list, schedule, abstracts, profiles and interviews with the speakers. I look forward to seeing you in Second Life on December 10, and I am available for live help.