Fight Aging!

As noted via Betterhumans, the Extropy Institute has announced its dissolution.

ExI deems its mission as essentially completed. With this said, and in respect for Extropy Institute's legacy of achievement, the Board voted and has unanimously agreed to close Extropy Institute's doors.

Extropy Institute's website is being memorialized by turning it into a reference "Library of Transhumanism, Extropy, and the Future," - the beginnings, currents, and future of Transhumanism.

On behalf of our members, I would like to thank Max for authoring the philosophy of Extropy and for his many efforts in working with others to steer the philosophical development of transhumanism, which is truly treasured by so many people in so many places.

From where I stand, this is a post-hoc official stamp on the end of a chapter in the ongoing growth of transhumanist ideas - such as, and most importantly in my view, the path to radical life extension. Chapter's end was effectively a few years ago, as it became clear that the Extropy Institute was not intending to attempt the same sort of expansive transition engineered by the Foresight Nanotech Institute. As I recall, around the time the Proactionary Principle was solidified, I wrote in a private email to Max More and Natasha Vita-More that "the Extropy Institute has essentially achieved its original goals." After all, look around. Topics such as radical life extension were only discussed in small groups and modest forums not so long ago; these same topics are now fodder for the evening news, while efforts aimed at large scale fundraising for research are underway. For radical life extension, we are moving beyond futurists and into the age of patient advocates and scientists. This was the point, and it has come to pass as the result of hard work from many, many people and organizations.

For those new to the healthy life extension community - which will be many of you, given the growth in interest and number of organizations in the past couple of years - this is probably all ancient subcultural history. But it's important ancient history, because these folk worked hard to bring healthy life extension - and many other related concepts, such as nanomedicine - in from the fringes. If you weren't thinking adult thoughts back a decade or two, it might be a shock to see just how much more remote and ridiculed was any discussion of meaningful anti-aging and longevity science.

You can draw lines of association between the open salon that was the Extropy Institute and almost everyone of note in the pro-healthy life extension community. While I can't claim to be "of note," and my support for a future of greatly extended healthy longevity came about as a bolt from the blue long before my involvement with the community, it was via the Extropy Insitute forums that I came to be involved. For that matter, those forums were how I came to needle myself into running a position platform website, leading to all of the meaningful involvements that came afterwards.

As a final thought, you are defined more by what you choose to discard than by what you choose to keep, and there will be a time of discard for each and every thing you hold. Directed change is vital if the concepts developed in the past are to shape and inform the future, rather than hold it back.

Technorati tags: life extension