Longevity. Resilience. Wellbeing. More!

A copy of the London Futurists newsletter distributed today.

Dear Futurists,

1.) Longevity 2020, 27th Apr to 1st May

It might be the most important gathering, so far, on the topic of significantly extending healthy longevity.

It’s been organised at high speed, but it has already built a very impressive support.

It’s Longevity2020, taking place as a worldwide online event, for two and a half hours every weekday next week. Mon 27th April to Fri 1st May. The conference starts at 4pm every day UK time (BST):

• Mon 27th Apr: Defining biological aging
• Tue 28th Apr: Rejuvenation therapies
• Wed 29th Apr: AI & Longevity
• Thu 30th Apr: Longevity investing
• Fri 1st May: Longevity: start now

The organisers are Longevity Technology.

You may recognise some of the speakers from the image above. For more details of the speakers and their topics, click here. (And don’t forget to “Load More” when you come to the bottom of that page. As I said, it’s an impressive show of support.)

Remarkably, all the main sessions are free to attend. There’s also an option to register as a “VIP” (cost: ￡120) which provides access to a number of extras:

1. Participation in ‘Ask Me Anything’ (after-party) session with key speakers
2. Celebratory Longevity 2020 T-shirt
3. Complimentary access to two follow-on reunion events
4. Password access to video recordings of all sessions

For the full details, and to pick your registration level, click here.

2.) “Eyes on the prize” RAADfest webinar, Sat 25th April

As a kind of warm-up to some of the topics being covered in Longevity 2020, consider a free webinar from the Coalition for Radical Life Extension (the group behind RAADfest) in the evening of Sat 25th April. It runs from 8pm-10pm UK time (BST).

The webinar is entitled “Eyes on the prize”. Topics to be covered include:

• Ageless immunity
• Superlongevity mindset
• Important advances in age reversal.

The speakers will be James Strole, Liz Parrish, Aubrey de Grey, Sandra Kaufmann, Bernadeane, and Bill Faloon. For more details, and to sign up to attend, click here.

3.) Engineering Greater Human Resilience, Sat 25th April

Expanded healthy longevity is only one of the dimensions in which human resilience can be improved. The events of the last two months have provided a sad reminder of the frailty of many aspects of the human make-up:

• People who on one day seem to have many years of life ahead of them can be struck down by an unexpected infection
• We often fall for scams, distractions, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and other clever manipulations of our cognitive architectures
• We can be driven by spasms of emotion – disgust, contempt, hatred, self-loathing, panic, and more – so that we lower our defences both to biological infections and to irrationality
• We find ourselves pulled into viewing the world as “us vs. them”, looking for reasons to attribute blame to folk on the other side of a partisan boundary, ideological polarisation, ethnic divide, or other fragmentation
• In the midst of all our other weaknesses, we can let consumerist pressures override our better intentions.

Can we do better? That’s the story of human history. With ever-more powerful technology at hand, and with faster connectivity that magnifies all sorts of viral attacks, it’s increasingly urgent to explore possibilities to engineer greater human resilience.

That’s the topic of the London Futurists webinar taking place this Saturday afternoon, at our traditional starting time of 2pm.

As the moderator of this event, I’ll be joined by two distinguished co-hosts:

• Eleanor ‘Nell’ Watson, Coronavirus Task Force @ AAPM, and AI Faculty @ Singularity University
• James ‘J’ Hughes, Executive Director @ IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies)

There will also be a number of other panellists appearing at various timeslots throughout the event. These will be confirmed shortly.

To register to take part in the event, see this Meetup page, but note that the actual event will happen on a Crowdcast page. For more information about Crowdcast, read on.

4.) Some notes on the Crowdcast platform

Since the lockdown started London Futurists have run two events using Zoom and three using Crowdcast. The two platforms each have their strengths and weaknesses. For the time being, I’m inclined to keep using Crowdcast, though I’m open to feedback from audience members.

For our most recent Crowdcast event, on Monday this week, at least a couple of audience members reported receiving error messages from the system, at the time when the video broadcast should have started. They wrote comments into the chat window:

Crowdcast is saying it’s unable to subscribe to stream in a reasonable amount of time.

and

I keep getting “unable to subscribe…” after a minute or two and then have to reload the page.

I reported the issue to Crowdcast support and they replied:

It seems like it was on our end with some services pushing their limits. We’re working hard around the clock to further mitigate issues like these so please let us know if you still see this moving forward and appreciate your patience and understanding in these times.

As a straightforward workaround, anyone who experiences a similar glitch in the future is encouraged to select what Crowdcast call “Compatibility mode”, which they can access via the Help menu at the top of the screen.

I’m told that Crowdcast works well with most browsers most of the time. Chrome is particularly recommended.

One more tip to bear in mind: if you set a password for your Crowdcast account, you may find it quicker to log into an event for which you previously registered using a different computer or smartphone.

5.) A note on paying to attend online events

Both Zoom and Crowdcast charge fees for use of their software. To recoup some of these expenses incurred by London Futurists, I’m starting to request a small fee to attend some of our events.

Accordingly, for this Saturday’s event on Engineering Greater Human Resilience, the attendance cost has been set at ￡2.50.

If anyone judges themselves as unable to pay this fee, they can use a special discount coupon code, available on the Crowdcast registration page, to register for free (but only 40 such tickets are available).

As a comparison, ￡2.50 is probably less than the travel and refreshments costs that most people would have incurred in travelling to a physical gathering of London Futurists.

Happily, so far the rate of sign-up on the Crowdcast page doesn’t seem to be slower than usual, for Saturday’s event.

6.) Videos from the most recent London Futurists events

In case you missed them, here are video recordings from the three most recent London Futurists events:

By the way, if you’re ever trying to track down a recording (or other information) about a past London Futurists event, this page should be your friend: https://londonfuturists.com/previous-meetings/

7.) Evaluating the hype around AI – Mon 4th May

At the end of this Monday’s event “Beyond smoke and mirrors: seeing through technology hype”, the following comment appeared in the chat window:

Thank you. I think another panel discussion on the hype around AI would be interesting

As it happens… I’m addressing exactly that topic in an online event on Monday 4th May, organised by Feverup.

The event has the title “Artificial Intelligence for Beginners” and is described as follows:

AI—Artificial Intelligence—is going to change everything, we’re told. It changes how we meet new romantic partners, and how countries go to war with each other. But how does AI work? In a time of seeming fast-paced change, with marketeers making sky-high claims for the powers of the products their companies are developing, how can we separate fact from fiction?

I’ve given earlier versions of this talk to two previous Feverup sessions. This time there will be a number of changes:

• It will be online instead of in a nightclub, which alters the dynamics
• I’ll bring the material up-to-date in the light of the pandemic and lockdown.

Feverup are charging ￡5 to register and attend. More details here.

8.) Find Your Wellbeing During Covid19 – Transformative Tech, Tues 28th April

Transformative Tech are hosting what looks like a super event on Tuesday 28th April, running from 5pm UK time to 2am the following morning.

It’s called “Find your wellbeing during Covid-19”. Here’s an extract from the event website:

Join us for a 1 Day Online Summit to discover the Transformative Technology Tools that can help you find some relief, increase your resilience, and emerge from quarantine stronger than before the pandemic.

Discover the best products, get discounts, and get support in this challenging time.

Uncover strategies to help you, your family, and your extended community weather the next 2-3 months.

Learn how technology can help you deepen, rather than distract you, from what matters most.

Sessions will cover products, tools and platforms that can help with: stress and anxiety, mental support, happiness, sleep, emotional skills and support, social wellbeing and connecting, purpose and meaning, cognitive enhancement, emotional enhancement, and consciousness enhancement.

For more details and to register to attend, click here. There are still a few opportunities to apply to give a presentation there, too.

9.) Post-Pandemic Scenarios for Air Transport – Thu 23rd Apr

Given the news of the distress facing several airline companies, Fast Future have organised a very timely webinar from 3pm to 5pm tomorrow afternoon (Thursday).

Here’s an excerpt from their website:

Air Transport has been one of the most heavily disrupted sectors in the current crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has virtually grounded some carriers, dramatically reduced airport traffic, and battered revenue projections. The implosion of revenues has driven some players to brink of collapse and severely hindered investment plans across the aviation ecosystem. In the wider world, industries are rethinking their operating models, cutting budgets, and questioning the extent to which they will allow staff to travel until widespread antibody testing and vaccination programs are implemented. Leisure travellers are wondering when it will be safe to take vacations and short breaks again. Governments know they are reliant on air transport for economic recovery but are struggling to find the right intervention models and provide the necessary funding to keep airports open and planes in the sky.

So, what are the possible future development paths for the aviation ecosystem in this constantly changing environment and uncertain future? In this fast paced session, we will launch the results of the latest research conducted by Fast Future in partnership with Future Travel Experience. Rohit Talwar will present the findings on the Air Transport impacts of COVID-19, explore the near-term outlook and scenarios, and discuss the resulting implications and strategic priorities with industry leaders.

The panellists will be:

• Dr Joe Leader: CEO – Airline Passenger Experience Association & International Flight Services Association, USA
• Antoine Rostworowski: Deputy Director General, Programmes and Services – Airports Council International World, Canada
• Ivan Iliev: Head of European Programmes, Projects, and Strategy Department, Bulatsa, Bulgaria
• Daniel Coleman: Founder & CEO – Future Travel Experience, UK

For more details, and to register to attend, click here.

10.) An update on the future of politics

In the previous newsletter, I shared the news that the Board of the Transhumanist Party in the UK (TPUK) has invited applications for people interested in taking over the role of Party Leader.

Candidates should be:

• Resident within the UK
• Able to demonstrate knowledge of transhumanism and enthusiasm for it
• Able to explain their vision for how the TPUK would evolve under their leadership.

Applications close on Monday 27th April. If you’d like to join the existing set of candidates, please don’t delay!