Transhumanism has bled into the mainstream in any number of ways over the past two decades, in much the same way as the culture of science fiction, but has somehow managed to retain true minority status. To a certain degree, I believe this is because founding transhumanist advocates and thinkers of the present day movement have already succeeded in their goals. Ideas - such as radical life extension - that were once firmly fringe are now seriously discussed and considered far and wide. People have picked up the ball and are running with it. More traditional means of advocacy, education and funding to make the future real are now the name of the game, and developing the technologies of healthy life extension has become no different in practice than working to cure disease.

The 21st century is here - all change, all the time. But we wouldn't be in this presently favorable position for the future of healthy life extension without the advocacy of transhumanist groups over the past few decades.

Awareness of transhumanism in the West

Well, we do have many established scientists (including social scientists) and technologists in various fields at TransVision events and some of the Sci-Fi authors who were inspirations to the H+ movement openly support us and we publicly recognize them for that. Personally, I think the jist of our message - including the most radical ideas, some of which, like cryonics, are put into practice - and even the transhumanist movement itself is already becoming fairly well established in the sci-fi movement (at least in the U.S.) and within their own community networks scientists working on anything highly relevant to the H+ project are becoming knowledgable, even buying things like Alcor life insurance plans, etc. (at least that was what I've heard from Charlie Kam, who attends many such conferences).

Breaking through to a mainstream audience from there is not easy, but I think it is starting to happen (of course, celebs and pop icons on board might accelerate that process). Since at least 2002 there has been broad awareness within the bioethics community of transhumanism. We also see increasing coverage of at least aspects of the H+ movement and sometimes the +H movement itself in mainstream newspapers and magazines. My sense is we are working against a generally conservative tendency in the media not to report on technopromises before they seem really immanent (maybe due in part to historical disappointments over predictions of servant robots in every home, etc.). Moreover, we need to bring a more impressive "professional" advocacy image before we will be taken more seriously.

by Ben Hyink