Brian Alexander discusses the WAY premature announcement of a transhuman age during the 1970's and 1980's in his book Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion (2004). Alexander credits the figures I've also identified as sources of this idea: F.M. Esfandiary (who later changed his name to FM-2030) and Timothy Leary:
Alexander also references R.U. Sirius in this chapter. Sirius says he interviewed FM-2030 about 25 years ago for a publication he put out at the time, and he describes FM as "massively well read," along with FM's friends who filled up their homes with "libraries and collections of recent scientific papers," apparently in a self-educational process towards accomplishing their transhumanist goals. (Did these friends include cryonicist compulsive hoarders?)
From hindsight, given the improgression towards anything like what That '70's Transhumanism predicted we'd have by 2010, you have to wonder what all that erudition accomplished. (Magical thinking? Terror management?) And why do the surviving transhumanist bohemians from that era, like Sirius, even bother playing this game now?
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