The few days that I spent at RAADfest 2016, August 4-7 last year, were a wake-up call for me, in a very pleasant way.
RAAD stands for “Revolution Against Aging and Death”. It’s a bold name, for a set of big ideas that have to fight an uphill battle in a world that is, sadly, predisposed to find a kind of reconciliation with aging and death.
Critically, RAADfest is more than a set of ideas. It’s a community of people – the Coalition for Radical Life Extension – which exists both as a formal organisation and as a broader informal network. The “fest” part of the name is short for “festival”. RAADfest 2016 featured a combination of presentations, discussions, and art performances. The result was to highlight scientific progress, celebrate personal experiences, and to debate candidly about issues and opportunities.
RAADfest 2016 was also a chance for participants to reflect on the positive examples provided by the lifestyles and the projects of other attendees. What might we learn from each others’ experiences and achievements? That was where the wake-up call could be heard.
So what have we learned since last August? And what are the next steps?
With these questions in mind, I recently took part in a video conversation with Jim Strole, Director of the Coalition for Radical Life Extension and RAADfest.
The two of us looked forward to a bigger, longer RAADfest taking place this year, August 9-13. I’ll have the honour of chairing one of the key panels at that event. I’ll be asking a number of distinguished experts on healthy life extension questions about progress since the inaugural RAADfest twelve months previous:
- What has happened faster than you expected?
- What has happened slower than you expected?
- What took you completely by surprise?
- And in the light of these lessons, what do you recommend is done differently in the next twelve months?
It’s a long journey from the UK all the way to San Diego, southern California, where RAADfest will be taking place. But, judging from what happened at the event last year, that long journey could well be a gateway into a much better future.
To gain a fuller idea of the topics that will be included at RAADfest 2017, you can find a whole series of short videos of “RAADfest preview conversations” on YouTube.
Important: If you register by July 16th, using the discount code FUTURISTS, you can obtain tickets for just $497, rather than the current headline price of $692.
Postscript 1: If you can’t wait until August…
If you can’t wait until August before taking a deep dive into the question of how technology can abolish aging, let me draw your attention to a talk I’ll be giving on Monday evening (26th June) in a venue in Brick Lane, London E1.
I’ll be describing what I see as a credible roadmap to abolish aging by 2040. Click here to read more about this talk, and to register to attend. I’ll be building up to explaining the content of the near-balance of conflicting forces depicted as follows:
Postscript 2: More interested in AI and sustainability?
In case you’re more interested in AI and sustainability than in the radical extension of healthspans, note that the London Futurists event at Birkbeck College next Saturday (1st July) is “The future of AI and sustainability, with Alex Housley”:
Artificial intelligence (AI) is powering the fourth industrial revolution. Intelligent machines are tackling new cognitive tasks at scale, leading to enormous economic efficiency gains and disruption across the labour market. But what will be the net impact of AI on society and the ecological environment?
In this talk, Alex Housley, founder of open-source machine learning platform Seldon, will explain how the collaborative approach to AI development helps transform industries and provides the macro-scale opportunities for AI to make the world a better and more sustainable place.
Questions to be considered will include:
- What role can AI play in the transition to a sustainable economy?
- What successes can we already identify, with AI systems improving uses of energy, waste recycling, and the circular economy?
- What extra results can reasonably be expected, with future enhancements in AI?
For more details, click here.
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