Turing Church Online Workshop 1, Teleplace, Saturday November 20

The Turing Church Online Workshop 1, on Saturday November 20 2010 in Teleplace, explored transhumanist spirituality and “Religion 2.0” as a coordination-oriented summit of persons, groups and organizations active in this area.

Panelists (in the pictures):

• Ben Goertzel (Cosmist Manifesto)
• Giulio Prisco (Turing Church)
• Mike Perry (Society for Universal Immortalism)
• Lincoln Cannon (Mormon Transhumanist Association)
• Martine Rothblatt (Terasem)

Many other “interested observers” of transhumanist spirituality and “Religion 2.0” partcipated in the workshop, including the writers Robert Geraci and Remi Sussan.

About 20 participants attended the workshop and contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments.

For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talks, Q/A and discussion) on video. There are 3 different videos on blip.tv:

VIDEO 1 – Part 1, 600×400 resolution, 43 min, speaker Giulio Prisco, recorded by Fred and Linda Chamberlain
VIDEO 2 – Part 2, 600×400 resolution, 1 hour 28 min, speakers Mike Perry and Ben Goertzel
VIDEO 3 – Part 3, 600×400 resolution, 1 hour 7 min, speakers Lincoln Cannon and Martine Rothblatt

NOTES: To download the source .mp4 video files from blip.tv, open the “Files and Links” box.

Topics and issues discussed:

• To discover parallels and similarities between different organizations and to agree on common interests, agendas, strategies, outreach plans etc.
• To discuss whether it makes sense to establish a umbrella organization, or to consider one of the existing organizations as such.
• To develop the idea of scientific resurrection: our descendants and mind children will develop “magic science and technology” in the sense of Clarke’s third law, and may be able to do grand spacetime engineering and even resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future“. Of course this a hope and not a certainty, but I am persuaded that this concept is scientifically founded and could become the “missing link” between transhumanists and religious and spiritual communities.
• And of course, how to make our our beautiful ideas available, understandable and appealing to billions of seekers.

The workshop made evident that the participants, persons and groups, share very similar, overlapping and compatible ideas. It is also evident that there are different approaches to transhumanist spirituality, each with its own focus and priorities. Some participants observed that, since all of the spiritual transhumanist groups represented at the workshop are inclusive, it makes sense joining all. The idea of establishing a umbrella organizations for spiritually inclined transhumanists was discussed. An alternative is one of the existing groups, or perhaps Humanity+ (subject to their interest of course) as umbrella organization. The MTA and Terasem reported significant growth.

The Turing Church Online Workshop 1 was held in teleXLR8, a telepresence community for cultural acceleration. We produce online events, featuring first class content and speakers, with the best system for e-learning and collaboration in an online 3D environment: Teleplace. Join teleXLR8 to participate in online talks, seminars, round tables, workshops, debates, full conferences, e-learning courses, and social events… with full immersion telepresence, but without leaving home.