Speakers & Advisors

The following people have kindly agreed to act as sources of information and advice for various projects and matters of interest to the UK Transhumanist Association. Some of them are also willing to give talks and presentations on their areas of expertise.

Nick Bostrom, PhD

British Academy Research Fellow, Oxford

http://www.nickbostrom.com/

CV, Publications and Media appearances: http://www.nickbostrom.com/cv.html

AREAS OF SPECIALISATION: Philosophy of science; foundations of probability theory; ethics of technology and science

AREAS OF COMPETENCE: Ethics; logic and metalogic; political philosophy; philosophy of language; philosophy of physics; computational neuroscience; artificial intelligence Co-founder of the not-for-profit World Transhumanist Association

http://www.transhumanism.org/

Aubrey de Grey, B.A., M.A. and Ph.D.

SPECIALISATION: Anti-Ageing

Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge

http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/

The central goal of my biogerontology work is to expedite the development of a true cure for human aging.

In my view, the main obstacle to developing such technology is the position of biogerontology at the boundary between basic science and medicine: the fundamental knowledge necessary to develop truly effective anti-aging medicine mostly exists, but the goal-directed frame of mind that is best suited to turning research findings into tools is very different from the curiosity-driven ethos that generated those findings in the first place.

As a scientist with a training in an engineering discipline (computer science), I am unusually well placed to bridge this gap. I attempt to do so in three main ways: I do basic biogerontology research, I identify and promote specific technological approaches to the reversal (not merely the prevention) of various aspects of aging, and I argue in a wide range of fora (extending well beyond biologists) for the adoption of a more proactive approach to extending the healthy human lifespan sooner rather than later.

Julian Snape

SPECIALISATION: Nanotechnology

M. Amon Twyman, DPhil.

SPECIALISATION: Arts and Culture

Areas of interest: cybernetics & artificial intelligence, theories of consciousness, virtual reality & transhuman art.

Transhumanism is a broad endeavour, whose advocates include those primarily interested in longevity and biotechnology, through to those interested in more long-term concerns such as artificial intelligence and consciousness uploading.

The question of whether the human mind might ever be electronically augmented or implemented in a non-biological medium is directly relevant to cognitive science, and the application of technologies like virtual reality to contemporary art may provide a testing ground for the future environs of posthumanity.

I am a research fellow in cognitive psychology at University College London, and a contemporary artist working with electronic music and virtual reality, who would be happy to talk about the relationships between these various fields, and their implications for transhumanism.