EDITORIAL

Architecture is not a business, not a career, but a crusade and a consecration to a joy that justifies the existence of the earth.

[Henry Cameron in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, p.81]

Our desire to live up to our name — Extropy — impels us to continuously break new ground. In this issue we do that in two ways:

1. By extending the range of topics covered. Understanding and creating a future fit for posthumans requires more than thinking about life extension, expansion into space, and skyrocketing computer power. Fred Stitt’s “Evolutionary Architecture and Extropian Consciousness” introduces a whole new area of endeavor to be analyzed from extropic standpoints. Extropian individuals want to bring order out of chaos, shaping and defining both their own bodies and minds and the outside world. The same drive might be expected to lead us to design the environments in which we work and play optimally to assist and reward us. We have presented writing on the aesthetic aspects of an extropic life in the past, and I intend to devote more space to these topics, bringing more balance to our coverage.

We always appreciate your feedback on topics yet to be covered. In upcoming issues we expect to cover future possibilities for composing transhuman and posthuman children and new family structures; bodily modifications; a state-of-the-art life extension program; genetic imperatives and transhuman possibilities for restructuring relationships; and plenty more on computers, nanotech, uploading, economic and political processes and structures too.

2. As a glance through the issue will reveal, Extropy is also leaping forward in terms of graphic appeal. While the insight, boldness, optimism,

ingenuity, and sheer thrill of the ideas always comes first, a slicker look helps cognitive digestion and makes it more likely new readers will pick up the publication.

The graphical upgrade results from several

sources. Readers’ comments resulted in the size of the type growing to improve legibility, and the number of fonts being restrained from boundless expansion. I am also delighted to welcome on board our new Art Director, Nancie Clark, whose skills and resources have added to the visual dimension of this issue.

I want to draw your attention to the Readers’ Survey. Filling it out and returning it will help us acquire more advertising to keep this publication alive and thriving. Dave Krieger (who put it together) and I will be grateful to those who send this in.

Finally, we welcome all the new readers this issue, may of whom heard about Extropy in the recent “Meet the Extropians” article in Wired. The back issue listing on p.40 will give you an idea of our range of coverage.

Upward and Outward!

Max More

P.S. We’ve chosen a location for the Extro-2 conference, and we have secured an eminent Keynote Speaker. See elsewhere in this issue for details.

EXTROPY — a measure of intelligence, information, energy, life, experience, diversity, opportunity and growth. Extropians are those who consciously seek to increase extropy. The Extropian Principles are: (1) Boundless Expansion; (2) Self-Transformation; (3) Dynamic Optimism; (4) Intelligent Technology; (5) Spontaneous Order. [See Extropy #11 for Extropian Principles v.2.5]

TRANSHUMANISM — Philosophies of life (such as Extropianism) that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values, while avoiding dogma and mysticism. [See Extropy #6]

EXTROPY #14 (7:1) First Quarter 1995

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Photo by Nanc Clark