Past Results of transhumanism aren't particularly impressing. The historical failure of most utopian visionary movements to make any impact is not encouraging either. See also Movement for more info on the H+ collective.

Films about transhumanism

There have been a number of marginal documentaries with transhumanists featured in them, and more coming out this year on life extension and so on.

And now there are about five film-makers/crews working on documentaries about transhumanism, most having public television as their intended market. Hopefully these will help humanize the term.

Media coverage

The "Chosun Ilbo" ("Korean Daily", the largest newspaper in Korea, with a circulation of 2.5 million copies, much more than The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal) has published an interview about transhumanism, which has a very nice drawing depicting the continuous evolution of humankind, from humans to cyborgs to posthumans (angels and/or devils?:-) and can be seen here: http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/01/01/2007010100060.html

Traditional forecasting/futurism

Sigma Scan, a mainstream future issues database commissioned by the UK Government, contains two Issue Papers that mention transhumanism: The Extended Self: better than well and Technology for the Body and Mind.

Awareness in politics

Topics, such as creation of superintelligence by 2030 have been discussed in the House Committee on Science ( http://www.sl4.org/archive/0304/6378.html ), for example, with Ray Kurzweil and Christine Peterson (Foresight Institute) participating.

Scientific publications

There have been publications on implications of transhuman developments in many leading science and popular science magazines.

In 2006 Science published the 1st (?) article with "immortality" in the title.

Internationally

China

We do have a beginning WTA chapter in Beijing. But, despite the language barrier, since we're talking about 1/4 of the world's population, the fact that we only have about a dozen Chinese members is striking.

Part of the explanation relates to your review of the agressiveness with which the Chinese are pursuing science and technology: there is no reason to be a transhumanist in a society where there are no Luddites or bio-conservatives. Maybe in another decade, after they get over the euphoria of techno-capitalist growth, and begin to live with the downsides of pollution and so on, there may be more of a debate about technology and values.

France

from Remi Sussan: Two years ago (in 2004), I would have said: nobody is interseted in transhumanism in France. Now, things have changed Let it be clear: I don't know any self-identified transhumanists in France (I even don't see myself as one, see below), but there is a growing interest for the ideas. For instance i work currently for an internet foundation which recently invited Giulio Presco and Robin Hanson in one of their seminars (and I wasn't even working with them at that time), and they probably hired me because of my interest in these things...big magazines like science et avenir are interested in what Bostrom have to say...

Nevertheless, I don't know about any "transhumanist movement" in France (James probably knows better if there is WTA chapter) , and I'm not sure it's a bad thing. People here (I'm very anti-french on many points, but I'm afraid I agree with the majority here) are very suspiscious of any "ism", probably because many french intellectuals have so much fouled themselves in the past with many of these isms, including communism, maoism, postmodernism, etc.

Finland

At the end of the year 2007 Finnish Transhumanist Association has reached a small milestone of over 200 members. Our membership numbers have risen steadily since the founding of FTA in 2003, approximately two new members per month. About 50% of all members live in Helsinki.

United Kingdom

See the March 2008 ExtroBritania meeting on “Transhumanism in the UK, 2008-2012: Hopes and fears, opportunities and risks”: http://www.uktranshumanistassociation.org/davidstalk.shtml , http://www.humanplus.org.uk/

Problems

• NBIC - cognitive aspect usually ignored
• Nanotech - Feynman molecular manufacturing not being funded/developed
• Enhancement - very few enhancement products created/marketed

Links

Considerations on the development of the transhumanist movement, Giulio Prisco