Extropianism

Extropianism is a philosophy of transhumanism that encompasses the Extropian principles in improving the human condition. It was founded in 1989 and incorporated in 1990 as a 501(c)3 non-profit. It established the modern movement of transhumanism through its conferences and publications. While it closed in 2006, for its time frame, it was largely in support of libertarian political values of democracy such as small government, individual rights, liberty, morphological freedom and the Proactionary Principle. However, many of its members were not libertarian and as an international organization encompassed transhumanists of diverse political backgrounds and views. These individuals share the advocacy of individual rights and the reduction of government. The movement's leading advocates include founder Max More.

Overview

Positions include:

• Medical deregulation
• Self-ownership

Members of the Extropian mailing lists would go on to be involved with Bitcoin, encryption and the beginnings of blockchain, future libertarian and transhumanist projects.

Principles: See Extropian principles

History

Main: Extropy Magazines

Official history

• 1988 - 1996 - Max More and Tom Bell will publish a total of seventeen magazines, with the first 4 titled Extropy: Vaccine For Future Shock and the remaining 13 later as Extropy: Journal of Transhumanist Thought
• 1991 - The Extropy Institute is established
• 1991 - Extropy-Chat mailing lists established -
• 1991 - Extro-1 Conference

• 1993 - "Neo-Futurists of the World Unite!" featured in the second ever edition of Wired
• 1994 - First conference held
• 1994 - "Meet the Extropians" featured in Wired
• 1995 - In the UK, Extropians are featured in a cover story 'The Tomorrow People'
• 1995 - Extro-2 Conference
• 1997 - Extro-3 Conference
• 1997 - The Extropy print magazines move online as 'Extropy Online'
• 1998 - Max More writes The Extropist Manifesto
• 1999 - Extro-4 Conference

• 2001 - Extro-5 Conference
• 2002 - Extropy Online relaunches as Extropy: Journal of Transhumanist Solutions
• 2002 - a BBS forum is integrated with the mailing list
• 2004 - the Transhumanist Cooperative Colloquium is active, forging alliances between transhumanist organisations
• 2004 - Vital Progress Summit I conference
• 2005 - Vital Progress Summit II was scheduled for winter 2005 but never materialised. ExI Satellite Meeting in 2005, Caracus, Venezuela ended up launching under the TransVision brand
• 2006 - The Extropy Institute closes, declaring its mission 'essentially completed'

Conferences

Extro-1

Flyer for 'EXTRO 1 - The First Extropy Institute Conference on Transhumanist Thought'

Sunnyvale, California, April 30 - May 1 1994

https://github.com/Extropians/Extropy/blob/master/extro1_ad.pdf

Extro1

https://web.archive.org/web/20011211090742/http://members.aol.com:80/T0Morrow/PolyJust.html

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.

Extro-2

Proceedings

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.

Extro-3

1997 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.

Extro-4

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.

Extro-5

2001: Reason.com review

Vital Progress Summit I

2004 http://www.extropy.org/summitabout.htm

The Vital Progress conference was held in response to the latest moves by Leon Kass.

Review

Later conferences

Vital Progress Summit II was scheduled for winter 2005 but never materialised.

ExI Satellite Meeting in 2005, Caracus, Venezuela ended up launching under the TransVision instead which held many successive events.

External links

• Extropianism on Wikipedia