Registered members of the WTA may already have seen the following
message. There's a pretty intelligent debate on the proposal
happening just now on the wta-talk mailing list.

Personally (as a voting member of the WTA), I expect to vote in
favour of this proposal.

>>>

The WTA Board has voted to offer the following proposal to our voting
membership. We will encourage discussion for a few days, followed
by a vote opening on Sunday morning and closing on Wed. midnight.
All voting members may participate in the vote on the proposal.
Voting members are those who current with their dues:
http://transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/join/

Thanks for your participation in this important discussion and vote!

James Clement
Executive Director

---------------------

Proposal:

1) That WTA adopt the icon "h+" and use it as our organization's
mark.

2) That WTA adopt "Humanity Plus" as our "doing business as" (DBA)
name and new identity, while maintaining the use of "transhumanism"
and "transhumanist" in our literature.

Context:

In order to grow our credibility (and thus resources), we want to
have more leaders from science, technology, business, government,
academia, and other areas associate with us and support us publicly.
Most thought leaders (especially in science and technology) do not
explicitly identify themselves as "transhumanists," and some, by
association, have been unwilling to affiliate with the World
Transhumanist Association. This is also true for graduate students
who may consider it detrimental to their careers to associate with
transhumanism in light of possible negative connotations.

We propose "h+" as our organization's new mark, as it derives from
the historical connotation of "H+" representing "transhumanism,"
while signifying our desire to emphasize individual action, local
activity, and small steps, which if pursued collectively can lead to
a swelling of grassroots activity of a size that our community has
not seen before, but that we can achieve.

We also propose "Humanity Plus" as our "doing business as" (DBA)
name, as it expresses the inherent ideal of transhumanism (see the
WTA's FAQ, http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/faq.html) without
including that term in our official name. We want to avoid turning
away allies who share our mission and aims. However, to maintain and
make clear the historical antecedents of "Humanity Plus" and to
affirm our solidarity with the original intent of the organization,
we will will continue to emphasize the WTA's FAQ as our official
statement on the purpose of transhumanism and "h+."

We are not proposing any changes to WTA's overall messaging,
including the use of "transhumanism." We are only proposing that we
shift our positioning slightly so that we can attract a broader
range of people to the organization, allowing us to better scale our
impact in the world.

As part of our re-branding, we will have a professional creative
design firm create a strong, consistent brand identity for the
organization. Our DBA, new logo, and overall brand identity will
then be incorporated into the forthcoming website redesign,
magazine, t-shirts, etc.

We feel good about this new direction. We are devoting significant
amounts of our time to this because we think the organization has a
crucial role to play in the world, but we want to see it make choices
that will allow it to grow. We hope this proposal will inspire all of
you as much as it does us. We want to see a time when tens of
thousands - especially students - are wearing "Humanity Plus" t-
shirts (a simple but fundamentally powerful choice); who are being
inspired to spend their life advancing humanity with as much
leverage as possible. We want to see a time when there is an immense
ground swelling of grassroots support and activism around Humanity
Plus, driven by new media and the remarkable online tools available
today. Our cause represents one of the greatest humanitarian
callings in the world today, with the capacity to inspire people in
a fundamentally new way. The task before us is to take steps that
will help more people see this.

<<<

PS There's extensive thoughtful discussion on much the same topic in
the comments following this April 2008 article from Russell
Blackford's blog, The Metamagician and the Hellfire Club:
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2008/04/transhumanism-still-at-
crossroads.html

(This discussion features a lengthy discussion between Russell
Blackford and Greg Egan)

// David Wood