History and
Achievements of ExI from 1998—2005
Successful Memetic
Incubator, 1988 Onward!
Technological progress
continues to accelerate. Extropy discussions about many advances used to
sound like science fiction. Now, almost every day we hear news about
breakthroughs in mammalian cloning, human cell immortalization,
nanoscale computer circuits, artificial retinas, genomics, and so on.
The terms "extropy" and "transhumanist" pop up in
public discussions more and more. The broader culture is gradually
realizing that many ideas and technologies are converging at an
ever-accelerating pace.
Some people respond with
confusion, not having in place an adequate world view to help them.
Others fight against change. Consider the destructive acts of the
anti-genetic modification groups, the fear-mongers and Rifkinites, and
those who oppose certain stem cell research approaches. Now, just as
ideas fostered and spread by Extropy Institute are bursting into the
mainstream, our role in incubating better futures becomes more important
than ever.
The time has come briefly
to review how Extropy Institute has connected people and catalyzed ideas
and organizations. It's easy to forget what we, as a community of mind,
have achieved over the years. This summary shows where we've been and
ends up suggesting where we can go from here.
Extropic ideas have
spread globally at an accelerating pace since 1988. The Institute's
spokespersons and affiliates have appeared in all forms of media, from
magazine and newspaper articles, to television documentaries and even
cinema productions. Spreading out from the USA, our ideas have been
heard throughout Europe, Asia, Australasia, and in numerous countries
that you may not have even heard of. Members and subscribers come from
dozens of countries. Some of them have been busy translating Extropic
writings (especially the Extropy principles) into other languages,
including German, Swedish, Italian, and French. Some of the effects of
Extropy Institute's activities are obvious. Others happen behind the
scenes by connecting individuals and organizations, and by shifting
public perceptions. What follows is a non-exhaustive, roughly
chronological list of some of ExI's successes as a memetic incubator,
catalyst of change, and network of practical futurism.
_______________________
Creating A Philosophy
(1986) by Dr. Max More
Despite its small scale
beginnings, Mizar/Alcor UK quickly generated a flood of media attention,
starting with an excellent piece by the Science Editor of The
Observer newspaper. Max's second television appearance was the Terry
Wogan Show (at that time equivalent to the USA's Phil Donahue), sitting
next to respected science writer and producer James Burke. (Burke made
supportive comments about nanotechnology and space habitation.) The
summer of 1987 kept Max, Garret, and Mike busy speaking with the media,
with Max doing a last moment BBC London interview before boarding the
plane to begin his doctoral studies in California. Together with Mike
Price, Max had produced several issues of Biostasis. In content,
this was a proto-Extropy.
Max More writes: "I
left England where I was studying at Oxford and moved to California
because I was in search of a broader way of thinking. Even in
California, I found the new world was still too backward. I was
frustrated with the stagnant thinking around me. I wanted to develop a
way of thinking that would wake up the world to the possibilities of the
future and help to stretch the minds of humanity. I had always thought
human beings were capable of so much more than what I had observed.
Frankly, I was pissed off at death and people who were aging and dying
and no one seemed to be doing anything about it. I was frustrated that
we were still stuck on this planet, many years after having landed on
the moon, and I was bewildered by the intellectual prisons people had
built for themselves. I always had an irrepressible urge to communicate
and organize. My ideas having matured into a clear vision, I now set out
to bring together the finest minds to join me in shouting out to the
world, Wake up! The future can be better than you ever imagined."
_______________________
Beginnings
In Print (1988-1990) - The beginnings of the transhumanism
1988:
Extropy #1 came out in August/September 1988 with just 50 copies.
Extropy (originally subtitled "Vaccine for Future Shock") was
started by Max More and Prof. Tom Bell, who met while both studying
philosophy at the University of Southern California. Extropy combined
interests in all limit-challenging areas from maximum life extension,
machine intelligence, and space exploration, to intelligence
augmentation, uploading, enhanced reality, and alternative social
systems, and futurist philosophy. Over time the paper-based Extropy
started building up the transhumanist network that later went online and
led to the conferences and the broader community of extropic thinkers
and activists. Some of those who appeared in its pages were Prof. Hans
Moravec, Dr. Ralph Merkle, Dr. Roy Walford, FM-2030, and Prof. Bart
Kosko.
1989:
In this year, Extropy #2 and #3 were published. Word of the
magazine spread due to reviews in Factsheet Five and other
alternative media. Reviews acted as an attractor for like-minded
thinkers. An extremely common letter to the publishers said something
like "I have always been an Extropic thinker, but didn't know what
to call it until now. I didn't think anyone else was like me. It's so
great to find out about you."
1990:
Extropy #5 came out, including a piece by physicist and science
fiction writer Gregory Benford on his meeting with Stephen Hawking at
Cambridge University. Extropy #6 included "Transhumanism:
Towards a Futurist Philosophy" by Max More and "The
Thermodynamics of Death" by Michael C. Price.
_______________________
Internet
Presence (1991-1993)
1991:
The founding of the "Extropians"
email list! Thanks to Harry Hawk and Perry Metzger, ExI created the
Internet's first email list focused on future technologies and their
philosophical and cultural implications. The original "Extropians
List" is still going almost a decade later. Thousands of
subscribers have come and gone over the years, with a few staying with
it throughout. The "Extropians List" continues to be the most
vibrant forum for transhumanist ideas while having sparked off numerous
other email lists, including local extropic email forums. The
"Extropians List" has drawn thousands of people from around
the world into the extropic community, continually refreshing our
thinking and augmenting our network. After Harry retired from
operations, David McFadzean took over. David has steadfastly and
reliably run the lists and ExI's web presence for years. Extropy
#7 focused on emergent order, including Prof. Tom Bell's "Privately
Produced Law", and Max More's "Order Without Orderers". Extropy
#8 published Robin Hanson's classic "Idea Futures" paper, even
including a illustrative idea futures coupon.
1992:
Exponent newsletter (for Extropy Institute members) starts in
September 1992, edited by Dr. Max More and Dr. Simon Levy (who met Max
when he was a doctoral student in Linguistics at USC). Extropy
#9, the first in full-size format, comes out including Hans Moravec on
"Time Travel and Computing".
1993:
Kevin Kelly reviews
Extropy magazine in the second issue of Wired
magazine. Extropy #10 includes Hans Moravec on calculating the
computational power if all matter were turned into computational
devices, Hal Finney on electronic cash, and J. Storrs Hall on
nanocomputers. Extropy #11 includes Ralph Merkle on Uploading
Consciousness and Julian Simon on resources and the future.
_______________________
First
Conference In Silicon Valley (1994-1995)
1994:
Extropy Institute's first conference, Extro-1, takes place in Sunnyvale,
California, with keynote speaker Hans Moravec on "The Age of
Robots" from what would be his next book. At the conference, Dr.
Christopher Heward discusses his ideas of "biometrics" for
personalized anti-aging medicine. In 1999-2000, the first Kronos clinic
will open, implementing this idea. (Chris developed the idea further at
his Extro-2 talk.) Based partly on the conference, Ed Regis's major article
for Wired magazine brings in many hundreds of information
inquiries and bringing awareness of extropic thinking to around 100,000
people. (In the next issue, one reader's letter derides extropy, calling
our movement a passing fad. Since then, our numbers have multiplied a
hundredfold.) Extropy #12 includes "The Open Society and Its
Media" by Mark Miller, Dean Tribble, Ravi Pandya, and Marc Steigler.
Extropy #13 includes a seminal article on Utility Fog by J.
Storrs Hall, who ran the nanotech Usenet list and who becomes Extropy's
Nano editor.
1995:
The Extro 2 conference, held in Santa Monica, California, reaches out to
new communities by creating liaisons with the digital media community.
David McFadzean and Duane Hewitt present a web-based implementation of
Dr. Robin Hanson's Idea Futures (now called the Foresight
Exchange). Prof. Michael Rothschild, author of Bionomics,
speaks on "The 4th Information Revolution". (Dr. More speaks
at the Bionomics conference later this year.) Pioneering futurist
FM-2030 brings his ideas to a new audience. Presentations by Natasha
Vita-More (and the panel following her presentation including Fiorella
Terenzi and Roy Walford) expand the conference's approach from science,
technology, philosophy, and economics into culture and the arts.
Extropy
magazine appears in the AI novel Host by Peter James, whose main
character is more pleased by a review of his work in Extropy than
those in any journal. (See Host, p.38). Extropy #14
includes part 1 of Dave Krieger's interview with gerontologist Dr.
Walford; a pioneering article on evolutionary architecture by Fred Stitt;
and a critical review of Frank Tipler's The Physics of Immortality
by Michael C. Price. Extropy #15 features several articles on
several articles on digital money and private currencies; the cover by
Natasha Vita-More portrays the great social thinking Friedrich Hayek in
an Extropy T-shirt on the a bill issued by the fictional virtual
bank of Extropolis; Max More profiles the pioneering futurist FM-2030;
and the Future Forecasts section compares educated estimates of future
breakthroughs by Gregory Benford, Alcor's Steve Bridge, Dr. Eric
Drexler, FM-2030, Mark Miller, Dr. Max More, and Nick Szabo.
Among the
copious media interest in extropic thinking is a major article in the
UK's Observer Life magazine on March 26 1995 by Jim McClellan,
who writes: "The funny thing about Max is that while his ideas are
wild, he argues them so calmly and rationally you find yourself being
drawn in." Gundolf Freyermuth's book Cyberland (in German)
devotes the last and longest chapter to coverage of extropic ideas. Some
of the other media coverage includes the Brazilian paper O Globo,
a documentary on Mysteries of the Millennium, and an article in
the LA Reader. Extropic ideas find their first semi-official home
on the then-new Web thanks to Eric Watt Forste.
_______________________
Exploding
Onto The Web (1996-1997)
1996:
In September, Extropy Institute's own web site at http://www.extropy.org/
is launched, providing a permanent virtual home. Extropy #16
includes a "Neuroscience Pioneers" feature, covering several
researchers at the University of Southern California Brain Project
working on intelligent agents, fuzzy logic and neural networks, brain
scanners, and direct neural-computer interfaces; Sasha Chislenko's
"Intelligent Information Filters and Enhanced Reality";
icoclastic economist Julian Simon's "Complacency and
Conservation", and Nick Szabo's "Smart Contracts: Building
Blocks for Digital Free Markets". Extropy #17 -- the last issue to
be published as hard copy -- comes out, including Dr. Amara Graps'
discussion with astronomer/musician Prof. Fiorella Terenzi; analysis of
the tragic permanent death of Timothy Leary (an early advocate of space
migration, intelligence increase, and life extension); Reilly Jones's
critique of John Perry Barlow's Cyberspace Independence manifesto;
conference reports on nanotechnology and life extension; and legal
theorist Prof. Michael Shapiro on "Performance Enhancement and
Legal Theory".
Amidst
the continuing stream of media, ExI's president appears on the big
screen in Iara Lee's Synthetic Pleasures, a full-length
documentary shown at numerous film festivals from Sundance in 1997 and
at movie theaters nationwide. Synthetic Pleasures
"encompasses all things artificial - landscapes, beauty, sex, even
intelligence."
1997:
Extropy Online takes over from the hard copy Extropy
magazine, continuing to publish stimulating transhumanist articles and
reviews. Hundreds of people signed Natasha Vita-More's Transhumanist
Extropic Art Manifesto which is now on its way to Saturn aboard the
Cassini-Huygens spacecraft (ETA in 2004). The Extro 3 conference in
Northern California tops the previous events: Eric Drexler makes his
first public announcement of his cryonics arrangements as part of a
witty banquet keynote talk (according to many it is one of Eric
Drexler's best speeches); AI pioneer Prof. Marvin Minsky also announces
his cryonics arrangement and is awarded his cryonics bracelet by Eric
Drexler to resounding applause. Also at Extro-3, Dr. Greg Stock speaks
on engineering the human germline, a talk that leads to Stock's UCLA
conference on the topic the next January. Kevin Kelly of Wired
magazine also speaks. Greg Bear's novel Slant, taking place in
2052 in a world altered by revolutions in nanotechnology, AI, and
psychotherapy, tells us that "The Extropians saw it first, bless
them" (p.229).
_______________________
Going
Global (1997)
1997:
Extropic ideas spread to Europe as Dr. More gives talks at four
conference in Germany, Austria, and Spain, with media coverage at each.
Elsewhere in Europe, extropic thinking is represented by Max and Natasha
Vita-More in a Swiss television documentary. "Extropians email
List" regular and prolific author Damien Broderick's book The
Spike is published, focusing accelerating technological progress and
drawing on online Extropians List discussions. In a curious turn of
event, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt starts Rage magazine,
regularly featuring articles by Dr.More and ExI Advisor Prof. Bart Kosko
as well as Hans Moravec. Two appearances on Big Life represent
the Institute's first Canadian television appearance.
1998:
Jim Halperin's very extropic second novel The First Immortal
helps bring even more interest in radical life extension and cryonics.
The Institute is honored to form its Council of Advisors initially with
Prof. Marvin Minsky, Natasha Vita-More, Prof. Bart Kosko, and Dr. Sharon
Presley. Soon after, Dr. Roy Walford joins as an Advisor with special
focus on the next conference. The international spread of extropic ideas
accelerates as the Internet grows ever more rapidly. Europe sees the
publication of several essays and interviews with More, such as in the
German collection FleshFactor. Books continue to be published
with analysis of extropic thinking and culture, this year including Techgnosis:
Myth, Magic, and Religion in the Information Age by Erik Davis.
_______________________
Biotech
Scientists and Visionaries Gather (1999-2000)
1999:
The Extro 4 conference on Biotech Futures: Challenges and Choices of
Life Extension and Genetic Engineering brings together radical thinkers
and mainstream scientists from places such as Geron Corporation, the
Berkeley National Laboratory, UCLA, and the University of California,
Berkeley. Scientific research is presented, and legal, artistic, and
philosophical issues are discussed. Prof. Vernor Vinge and Greg Bear
delight the audience with their creative thinking, and Natasha Vita-More
forms the focus of a feature article
in the January 2000 issue of Wired magazine. The Kronos Clinics
starts up, aimed at personalized age management, based on the ideas
expounded by Christopher Heward at the first two Extro conferences.
International
media coverage this year includes the Franco-German channel Arte,
which is broadcast all over Europe, the Netherlands VPRO TV, and a
Brazilian magazine. Several extropy participate in Wired's
January 2000 email list, Dr. More appears in the German Technocalyps
documentary, the Wall Street Journal's millennial
section drew on several extropians, and the San Jose Mercury News
publishes extropian views on the millennium. Alex Heard, taking over as
Editor at Wired, brings out his new book Apocalypse Pretty Soon:
Travels in End-Time America, which includes his personal take on
extropians.
2000:
Extropic ideas continue to expand internationally. At the same time more
local groups form, both in physical locations and through local email
lists. The media now routinely come to ExI for comments on new
technological breakthroughs and for glimpses of possible futures. We're
even seeing graduate students making documentaries on extropians ideas
for class projects. Ray
Kurzweil joins ExI's Council of Advisors as he appears on numerous
television shows and other media explaining the ideas in his book The
Age of Spiritual Machines. The extropian network directly or indirectly
leads to new organizations and initiatives, from LifeEx to the European
Transvision 2000 conference sponsored by Alcor-UK (originally founded by
extropians; see 1984-87). Most recently, Brian Atkins, and Sabine
Stoeckel, getting to know Eliezer Yudkowsky through the Extropy-chat
list (f/k/a Extropians list), started up a new research organization,
the Singularity
Institute for Artificial Intelligence. In the summer, ExI launched a
news, reviews, and discussion portal at extrodot.org, primarily thanks
to the work of Alex Bokov and David McFadzean. We're looking to expand
the portal, gather funding for upgrading the main website, and we're
planning our fifth conference to take an innovative way. A new section
of the ExI web site carries responses to Bill Joy's infamous long
article raising fears about genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and
robotics. Commentaries were by Max More, Ray Kurzweil, Natasha
Vita-More, and Eliezer Yudkowsky.
_______________________
Connecting
and Catalyzing
Extropy
Institute's former motto "Catalyzing the Future" has been
replaced by "Incubating Better Futures". Starting from a small
base and lacking wealthy founders, ExI has fulfilled that mission
remarkably well. Apart from the events listed above, ripple effects from
the extropy network have catalyzed new associations, organizations,
events, trends, and shifts in public views. Though ExI has no formal
connection with any cryonics organization, many extropians have cryonics
arrangements and a healthy kind of peer pressure has brought new members
to the cryonics groups (especially the Alcor Foundation). At our
conferences speakers would ask people to raise their hands if they were
wearing a cryonics bracelet. The large percentage who did made it seem
normal and sensible to those who hadn't given it much thought.
Extropic activities may have influenced both the
transhumanist culture and the broader public culture in such as a way
as to encourage other organizations to start up or to shift emphasis.
For example, the Dynamicist group espouses views that include the
pro-technology, pro-liberty, and change-welcoming aspects of extropian
thought, while the Foresight Institute has moved from relatively
conservative technical discussions of nanotechnology increasingly to
topics such as the Singularity and unlimited life spans. Ideas that
used to be discussed hardly at all outside extropian circles now
regularly appear in novels, science fiction movies, TV shows, and
publications such as Time
and Scientific
American (which has carried features on extension of the human
life span, tissue regeneration, and human-computer interfaces). In
2000, even President Clinton, commenting on Celera's completion of the
sequencing of the human genome light-heartedly said that perhaps we'll
soon discover how to live forever. In the summer, similar encouraging
comments about maximum life span extension were made by the CEO of
Human Genome Sciences. And, of course, the number of TV science
documentaries taking the idea of radical life extension and biological
transformation very seriously seems to grow endlessly.
_______________________
2001-2002
2001:
What's next? We continued to build our network, developing and debating
new ideas. Our organizational focus shifted more towards engaging with
public fears and concerns in order to accelerate development and guide
the wider culture in productive directions. The DDD section of ExI's
website (Decode Issues, Debug Ideas, Develop Solutions) was part of this
reorientation (which was later integrated with Extropy).
At the the Extro 5 Conference held in June 2001, Ray Kurzweil was
keynote, and Pro-Act Network was introduced.
2002:
At the beginning of 2002, Extropy Institute's website was relaunched
with a new design from Natasha Vita-More. This design concept, as well
as continued site-wide reorganization and improvements in
navigability, were implemented by the new webmaster, Ziana
Astralos. An extensive Resources
section was added; progress was made on a revised and expanded FAQ;
and a BBS
integrated with the mailing
list was made available through the help of David McFadzean. ExI's
magazine returned from dormancy as Extropy:
Journal of Transhumanist Solutions, and continues to publish a
variety of insightful articles. An Affiliates
program was also introduced.
_______________________
2003
Max More stepped down as President
and was elected as the Chairman of the Board
of Directors. Natasha Vita-More was elected by the Board of
Directors as President of ExI. The Board reelected Greg Burch as
Vice-President, and Mark Miller and Robert Bradbury as board members.
David McFadzean was elected to the Board in 2003.
2004
Vital Progress Summit I.
The keynote participants were Ronald Bailey, Robert A. Freitas, Jr.,
Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil, Max More, Christine Peterson, Michael
Shapiro, Gregory Stock, Natasha Vita-More, and Roy Walford. The Summit
was also supported by Marvin Minsky, Michael West, Lee Silver.
Jose Cordeiro and
Anders Sandberg were elected to the Board in 2004 several months after
Robert Bradbury resigned.
2005
Projects:
Strategic
Plan 2005 - 2008
The
Proactionary Principle
The World's Most Dangerous Idea
Best of the List
Redesign Website
Statellite Conferences
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