Natasha Vita-More

Natasha Vita-More PhD is founder of Transhumanist Studies and former Graduate Studies Department Chair and Professor of Innovation, Ethics and Communication at UAT (2012-2020). Her experience in the field of foresight establishes principles and practices for assessing humanity's potential futures. Her proficiency as a professor of ethics has produced high-level scholarship toward understanding the challenges societies face.

Natasha appears in more than two dozen televised documentaries, and called “an early adapter of revolutionary changes” (Wired, 2000), a “role model for superlongevity (Village Voice, 2001), and “advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities” (Politico, 2017), Ray Kurzweil states, “Natasha Vita-More is a very engaging, highly regarded, and dramatic speaker, writer, and thinker”.

Known as the co-founder of the transhumanist movement, introducing the seminal field of human enhancement for longevity in academics, developing the theory of the regenerative generation, Natasha continues to speak and write about cultural, philosophical, and socio-political issues concerning what it means to be human, and the need for lifelong learning to better understand the current environment and our place in it and to develop trajectories for where we are headed in the near and distant future.

She is the author and co-editor of The Transhumanist Reader, innovative designer of Primo Posthuman the first future human body prototype, developed a scientific breakthrough on long-term memory and neuron preservation of C. elegans, and an international speaker on human enhancement, longevity, and humanity's future. She is Executive Director of Humanity+ and former faculty at the University of Advancing Technology. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy (University of Plymouth, UK), Master of Philosophy (School of Engineering, Communication and Technology, University of Plymouth, UK), and a Master of Science in Future Studies (Social Science & Humanities Department, University of Houston, US).

Personal Life

Dr. Natasha Vita-More wrote the "Transhuman Statement" in 1983, whcih later became "The Transhumanist Manifesto (1998, 2019), hosted and produced "TransCentury UPdate" cable TV show in 1988-1994, and developed Transhumanist Arts & Culture in 1992 She has been an advocate of radical life extension for many years. Natasha was in a romatic and professional relationship betweem 1983 and 1991 with FM-2030. She was the point person for his cryonic suspension, which she fought for on his behalf, against odds due to the lack of understanding of cryoncis by his caretakers at his death cryonic suspension in 2000. Today she is married to Max More, the former CEO and President of Alcor and current Ambassador and President Emeritus. Together, they pioneered the worldwide movement of transhumanism.

History

In 1983, after authoring the transhumanist manifesto, she developed events in the Los Angeles that focused on life extension. In 1986, she produced and was host of TransCentury UPdate, a cable TV show on the future. In 1992, she signed up for cryonics.

In 1992, Natasha (operating under her previous name, Nancie Clark) was elected to the County Council of the Green Party of Los Angeles County, representing the 28th State Senate district.^[1] She resigned her seat in 1993.

In 1996, Vita-More innovated the concept of a whole body prosthesis. With a team of experts (Marvin Minsky (AI), Hans Moravec (robotics) and Ralph Merkle (nanotechnology)), she designed the first future body design as a wearable system. This is known as Primo Posthuman, a vision for a highly modified transhuman body.^[2]

In 2004 she briefly set up an early alliance of transhumanist organizations in the form of the Transhumanist Cooperative Colloquium.

In 2015, Natasha demonstrated that long-term memory of the nematode worm C. elegans can be sustained after cryonic suspension and reviving.^[3] The published paper and received more than 16,000 downloads the first month.

Notable Facts

Natasha Vita-More is the Executive Director of Humanity+, Inc., a non-profit educational organization.
Featured in the documentary Inhuman: The Next & Final Phase of Man is Here
Coalition for Radical Life Extension Steering Committee member
Co-author of the Transhumanist Declaration
Speaker at Human by Design

External Links

References

[1] "County Council, Green Party of Los Angeles County"

[2] "Ep. 32 - Designing the Future with Natasha Vita-More"

[3] "Persistence of Long-Term Memory in Vitrified and Revived Caenorhabditis elegans"

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