IEET Conference - Preliminary Report

Introduction * Part 1 * Part 2 * Part 3 * Part 4 * Part 5

This is a preliminary report on the Saturday session of the IEET Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights conference, which I attended today at Stanford University. Later entries will go more deeply into specifics and responses to some of the ideas and arguments presented during the talks, however, this entry is intended to give the basic impressions of what turned out to be one of the most intriguing Saturdays I've ever experienced.

I arrived at Stanford at 8:00 AM, and found that the campus area around the law school building (where the conference was held) was quite deserted, save for a few people setting up coffee and bagels. Registration was simple, and consisted of my giving my name and being handed a name tag. I wandered around for a bit, briefly talking to a few people (the question of how to spell "decaf" came up), and eventually settled into one of the surprisingly comfortable chairs in Room 190. A few people introduced themselves at random; one thing I found rather amusing / interesting from a sociological standpoint was the sense of not having an "affiliation" to claim. My name tag just said my name on it, and when introducing myself, there were these brief silences that ensued after giving my name. Practically everyone I talked to was either affiliated with an organization or somehow involved in a particular formal academic role. Eventually, I wrote "Electrical Engineer and Curious Person" on my badge beneath my name, because, well, that's what I am!

Whatever the credentials of the speakers and attendees, the overall atmosphere was one of egalitarianism. Despite the fact that some talks focused on the potential competitiveness inherent in human nature, I noted a definite sense of cooperation, even between those whose viewpoints were somewhat in opposition. That is, everyone who came seemed to have the same goal: to bring up ideas and possible ethical frameworks for decision-making. I quite honestly feel now that just having attended this sort of meeting-of-minds may in itself constitute some sort of "enhancement" (or at least, modification -- one of the things I took away from this conference was a certain sense of discomfort with the idea of using the word "enhancement" when the things described as enhancements may be largely subjective in terms of their benefit for the individual. But that is a digression I will have to follow up on later). But one thing is certain -- there are neural connections in my brain that did not exist this morning, and for that, I am compelled to thank everyone who spoke and conversed.

I took lots and lots of notes. These will hopefully allow me to review and process many of the ideas that were brought up and explored, but that will have to wait until tomorrow when my full neural faculties are back online. As noted, I had a wonderful and intriguing day, but it was also quite an energy expenditure in terms of dealing with information and stimulus overload. Well worth it, but I am definitely (as predicted) too tired to attend the Sunday session. I will most definitely be seeking the audio for the Sunday portion of the conference, as well as the end of the Q&A session that I missed tonight due to taking the 9:30 ending time literally and having my ride outside waiting for me at precisely that time. (That session included Aubrey deGrey and Walter Truett Anderson, and I'm rather sorry I did not plan better for the possibility that the conference might extend beyond its stated ending time. But again, I'm hoping to be able to obtain a recording of what went on after I left).

The cross-section of attendees was quite diverse. I was pleased to see that there was a reasonable number of fellow females there; I'd (perhaps ignorantly) predicted that this would not be the case. One thing I found interesting was having lunch at what turned into a Girl's Table -- that NEVER happened to me in junior high (if anyone was willing to sit with me then, it was usually the boys). I loved the sense of being among people who were all very interested in the sorts of things I think about constantly -- over lunch I discussed morphological and neurological diversity with Nikki Sullivan and Susan Stryker and two other people who I did not get the names of but who assisted with the promotion of and setup for the conference on behalf of the IEET (I hope I have my facts correct here).

EDIT: In my post on gender, I did comment that I did not usually classify people primarily along gender lines, and I do not. However, I have been compelled to think much more about gender lately since though I've never thought it to be particularly imporant, many people do, and it comes up in discussion often enough that it's become interesting to me from a sociologial standpoint.

I met George Dvorsky and found him to be a very pleasant fellow -- quite the gentleman and as smart in real life as he is on the Internet. (Though I apologize again for not being able to say that his presentation was particularly radical -- as I'm a neurodiversity advocate and life-extensionist, you have to get pretty darn radical to faze me at all these days.)

I also decided today that whatever I may be, a journalist I am not -- at least not the sort that takes lots and lots of pictures. I brought my camera but only took a few shots, since it didn't really seem that the main substance of the conference was anything that could really be captured in a still digital image. As a point of general principle, I don't like taking pictures of people when they're up in front of a room speaking, mainly because I figure the moment I chose to take the picture they'd probably end up getting blinded by the flash and going, "Aaaaaa!" and dropping their notes or something. (I have a decided knack for rather poor social timing and getting in the way of where people are trying to walk, but happily, that didn't come too much into play today.)

Hopefully I'm not repeating myself too much here, but seriously, it was wonderful to just be able to start conversations RIGHT at the interesting stuff without worrying about preliminaries. I could just turn around and start yammering at whoever was behind me about some aspect of genetics or biology or ethics or a combination of those, and they'd actually engage in very interesting discourse. This was a definite example of a situation in which my supposed "narrow obsessive interests" did not pose a social disadvantage, but rather the opposite. The notion of shared context is not something I experience much at all outside the realm of Internet communication, so having that in real-time and physical proximity was extremely interesting and just as joyfully surreal as I'd expected.

So, there will be much more on this but for now it is bedtime.