Candidates for the 2007-2009 WTA Board of Directors seats
Jose Cordeiro
Anne Corwin
Michael LaTorra
PJ Manney
Giulio Prisco
Mike Treder
If you are a voting member of the WTA, you can vote here. Polls close midnight GMT January 13, 2006.
Jose Cordeiro (www.cordeiro.org) was born in Caracas (Venezuela) in 1962, to Spanish refugee emigrant parents. He studied engineering at MIT (Massachusetts), economics at Georgetown University (Washington,
DC) and management at INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France). He did his MIT graduate thesis at NASA, where he worked on dynamic simulations for today’s International Space Station, and is a lifetime member of the Sigma Xi (Scientific Research) and Tau Beta Pi (Engineering) Honor Societies in North America . He has been involved in the futurist movement since the early 1980’s, and is member of the World Future Society, World Futures Studies Federation, Club of Rome, Immortality Institute, Extropy Institute and Lifeboat Foundation. He has worked as a petroleum engineer, economist and futurist in several countries with the United Nations (UNIDO), French oil multinational Schlumberger, US consulting company Booz-Allen & Hamilton and the international Millennium Project. He speaks fluently Spanish, English and French, and understands well Portuguese, Italian and some German. He has written extensively (hundreds of articles and a dozen books, some available through Amazon.Com), including ideas on humans, transhumans and posthumans, both in English and Spanish. He has also written or has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Times, Korean Daily (Chosun Ilbo), Japanese Daily News (Mainichi Shimbun), ABC, BBC and CNN, and has been listed in the prestigious Marquis Edition of Who’s Who in the World. Jose has a biweekly column in the largest Venezuelan newspaper (El Universal) that can be read all over Latin America and has interviewed some very famous people, including a dozen Nobel Prize laureates, Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Sir Arthur C.
Clarke, Jeffrey Sachs, Richard Dawkins and others who first heard about transhumanism through him. Jose believes that transhumanism has to become mainstream in order to advance, it has to become a major world movement with prominent and respected people.
As a transhumanist, Jose cofounded the Venezuelan chapter of the WTA, one of the most dynamic chapters in the world, and has been very active creating and supporting other transhumanist groups from Finland to Hungary and from Brazil to India . As former WTA Chapter Coordinator, he helped doubling the number of WTA chapters around the world, including all the Latin American chapters, Belgium and Hungary in Europe, and India in Asia, for example. He chaired the TransVision 2005 conference in Caracas with participants from almost 30 countries, including government officials, scientific associations, bussiness people and even -by teleconference from Sri Lanka- the legendary writer and futurist Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Jose is now fully supporting the next TransVision conference in Chicago, just like he did last year in Helsinki, and he has also given many formal and informal presentations about transhumanism in front of different audiences, from the USA and Mexico to Japan and Spain, where he has also energetically supported the local transhumanist groups. He is very active as part of the group responsible for the Spanish transhumanist web page www.TransHumanismO.org. He has also supervised the translation of several transhumanist materials in Spanish and Portuguese, coordinated the edition of the first transhumanist book in Korean and is thinking about similar books in Japanese and Chinese.
Jose is moving this Summer to Japan, where he will be at the leading development economics think tank in Asia, and he will be working with other groups from major Asian countries like China, India and Korea.
In Japan, he will also finish his PhD thesis where he deals with science and long-term development.
Jose strongly believes that transhumanism is the new force that will positively transform the world, including the poor and developing nations. He wants to continue serving the WTA communities to help spreading the transhumanist memes throughout the world, in different countries, in different languages, in different cultures. As a broad-minded individual, he fully supports the extropians, singularitarians, immortalists, cryonicists, body modifiers, uploaders, and all other transhumanists regardless of sexual preference, religious affinity, skin color, physical handicap, national origin, and any other pre-posthumanist considerations.
Transhumanism has to be tolerant or it will not succeed. Jose wants to make a better world, in a better multiverse of boundless possibilities.
Summary: mainstream, visibility, news, books, publications, movies, arts, science, Latin America, Spanish, North America, English, Asia, Japan, China, Korea, India, Europe, Africa, development, chapters, public relations, fund raising, tolerance, alliances, transhumanism, extropy, singularity, cryonics, immortality.
Anne Corwin: I am a working electrical engineer living in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA. I have a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. A lifetime of interest in science and technology has shaped both my career path and personal pursuits. Particular interests include radical life extension, cryonics, bioethics, biotechnology, neurodiversity, disability rights, and cognitive science. In April 2006, I started the blog podcast. Both the blog and podcast focus on the topics listed above.
Experience and Vision:
In May 2006, I attended the Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights conference, initiated by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) and held at Stanford University. Attending this conference was a turning point in my involvement in transhumanism / technoprogressive discussion, because it compelled me to take an active role in speaking up and learning about emerging technologies and their ethical implications. I stayed in contact with some of the folks I met at this conference, and ended up signing on as an intern with the IEET. I am also a volunteer with the Methuselah Foundation and plan to continue learning as much as I can about emerging longevity science and what might be necessary to hasten its development.
In addition to this, I am working on a paper for submission to the Journal of Evolution and Technology on the subject of neurodiversity in an era of emerging transformative technology. As a person on the autistic spectrum, I am concerned about helping to bring about an inclusive future that both enables all kinds of people to meet their goals and participate in society, and avoids the over-medicalization of variation to the detriment of all citizens. I also recognize that disability rights, civil rights in general, and transhumanist thought share a common valuation of morphological and cognitive liberty—the right to configure one’s mind and body must necessarily include the right to modify and the right to refuse modification.
I believe that properly staffed and mobilized, the WTA has the potential to offer a reasonable and rational forum for discussion of emerging technologies and the social, political, and ethical implications thereof—as well as the kinds of tangible activist efforts needed to promote real, positive change. Primarily, I see transhumanism as a term that provides a means to identify and coordinate with others who share a future-positive vision of reality, and who, rather than fearing technological development by default, look to science and reason for opportunities to improve such things as health care, education, social services, and overall cultural evolution. Technology and ethics must be developed in congruence with one another, and humans have already demonstrated that we’re capable of rapidly accelerating technological growth—it’s time we also developed appropriate social, political, and ethical paradigms to deal with this growth.
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 on the WTA Membership Committee and the Board of Directors of the IEET. He also serves as President of the Daibutsuji Zen Temple. Mike has served on the Board of Directors of the World Transhumanist Association since 2002, and is the Director of Publications and Editor of the WTA News.
Patricia Manney Vision: I’m not your typical WTA person. I’m not an academic, scientist or technologist, nor do I have graduate degrees, but I’m every bit as committed, aware and excited about the future of humanity, being self educated in this realm and working with H+ ideas artistically.
My strength lies in understanding the mechanics of spin and the power of storytelling. If we want to convince the world of our ideas, the story we tell must be compelling, accurate and optimistic, even while presenting a world at risk. The positive story must be in language society can understand and I can help craft the language and image that transhumanism needs to carry it from the fringes of philosophical thought to the mainstream. As much as we think about the future, we reside and can only act in the here and now. Therefore, I seek practical solutions to deal with issues today, on the ground, which affect not only our organization, or the transhuman movement, but the rest of humanity.
Transhumanity is frightening to many because it represents change in its most profound forms. This fear comes from a lack of understanding that change has always been with us. And we haven’t been very successful at selling this idea. If I may be brutally honest with people I’ve come to respect greatly, until now, we’ve been seen as a bunch of fractious eggheads who present terrifying sci-fi futures the average person can’t comprehend. I want to globalize, unify and distill our message into an embraceable vision and elevate the standing of this organization as the one-stop-shop for understanding transhumanism.
Zeitgeist is important and I listen to it for a living. And for the first time in recent history, we have the possibility of not only riding the zeitgeist’s wave, but guiding its direction, instead of struggling against the current. Because for all the talk of technology aiding individualism, there is nothing more individual than the H+ ideal. But we have to catch that wave, first.
I hope to forge relationships between the WTA and media and creatives in many fields, to educate them on H+ issues. The key is to promote the WTA as the voice of transhumanism, disseminated to those who spread H+ memes to the public. This has already been underway within the WTA through excellent individual efforts, but the development of a consistent, united WTA front will go a long way in moving us into the zeitgeist’s waters and into the public’s minds.
Background: I attended Wesleyan University and graduated with a B.A; double majoring in Film and American Studies. I live with my husband and two children in California.
I have worked for over 20 years in the communications field; first, in public relations for motion pictures at Walt Disney/Touchstone Pictures, then in movie story development for independent film production companies. A move to New Zealand prompted my turn to writing on Hercules – The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. Returning to the United States, I created Uncharted Entertainment with my partners and have written and/or created many pilot scripts for television networks, including CBS, Fox, UPN, Discovery, ABC Family and Comedy Central.
I am presently writing a techno-thriller/H+ novel and contributed an essay on empathy and technology for the WTA’s book, BEING & TRANSHUMANISM: A Modern Primer for Tomorrow’s Humanity. I hope to continue adding to the H+ oeuvre over as many years as H+ technologies allow me to! You can see more of my H+ thoughts on my website, www.pj-manney.com
Giulio Prisco I wish to remain on the WTA Board and contribute to the next phase of growth of our Association in the next two pivotal years.
My profile, my interpretation of transhumanism and my thoughts on other “big issues” are outlined in my home page. My thoughts on the current status of the transhumanist movement and the challenges ahead are outlined in my recent “ Considerations on the development of the transhumanist movement”.
Mike Treder I’ve been proud to serve on the WTA Board since its formation. I believe the intersection of emerging technologies and human interests will provide some of our greatest ethical challenges—and most exciting humanitarian opportunities—in the years to come. My aim is to support the World Transhumanist Association in taking on the tough questions, encouraging open debate, and standing up for the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities.
Background: After a 20-year career in media and communications, I co-founded the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology in 2002. CRN is a non-profit research and advocacy organization concerned with the major societal and environmental implications of advanced nanotechnology. We promote public awareness and education, and the development of effective recommendations to maximize benefits and reduce dangers.
In addition to my work with CRN, I am a consultant to the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University, a Research Fellow with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and a consultant to the Future Technologies Advisory Group. I also serve on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Lifeboat Foundation, and I’m a member of the World Future Society.
I have published more than 20 articles and papers, and have been interviewed numerous times by the media. As a sought-after speaker on the societal implications of emerging technologies, I’ve been privileged to address conferences and groups in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil.