David, Amon, I am disappointed. On one hand this looks like another
excellent event and everybody here is profoundly grateful for all
you've done. On the other, you are well aware of the controversy
surrounding one of the speakers...

On the Neofascist Infiltration of Italian Transhumanism
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/stile20100209/

The Political Roots of "Overhumanism"
http://estropico.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104:the-politi\
cal-roots-of-qoverhumanismq&catid=46:varie&Itemid=85

Chrome Plated Jackboots
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/09/chromed_jackboots.html

...and a polite "no thanks" would have been the appropriate course of action.

Of course, I have no doubt that he'll be nothing but charming and on
best behaviour on the day, and that his talk will be 100% on-topic,
but he plays different games on different tables, to coin a phrase.
After the event, he'll go back to moderating his neofascist Italian
forum and writing on Italian far-right newspapers and websites
(allegedly, I should say, as for *a few* of his activities he uses
pseudonyms that are different from the one he'll use for the Birkbeck
talk).

And you can be sure that he'll exploit to the full his partecipation
to the event to show to all and sundry that he is kosher after all...

I guess it's all a question of ethics. If, say, a pro-ethnic cleansing
Serbian nationalist also happened to be a brillian AGI researcher,
should we invite him to give a presentation? If one day it transpired
that Max or Anders had been writing ambiguous articles on the website
of the English Defence Legue, should we change the way we think of
them? My answers are "no" and "yes", but I guess yours would be
different...

Cheers,
Fabio

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 6:03 PM, Amon Zero <amon@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Dear All -
>
> In one month (Saturday October 8th) I will be giving a talk at "Beyond
> Human: Rethinking the Technological Extension of the Human Condition" at
> Birkbeck College, London, along with a number of other speakers.
>
> The event is being organised by Humanity+ UK in association with the Virtual
> Futures conference series and Zero State, so we'll see a full advertisement
> from H+ UK shortly. In the meantime, here is a link to the (very) extended
> abstract of my presentation, which in turn includes links to the H+ UK
> website.
>
> http://transhumanpraxis.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/a-new-transhumanism/
>
> http://humanityplus.org.uk/#bh
>
> All the Best,
> Amon
>
> p.s. Apologies for any innapropriate crossposting - I have included these
> lists as places where people are likely to be interested in broad-strokes
> commentary on transhumanism as a movement, and its relationship to society.
> If you know anyone else who may wish to hear about this, please do pass the
> message on.
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>