I'm very much in favor of folk who step up and inspire people to get things done: all sweeping changes start with a single act, and the world can be changed greatly if a million people each contribute one small but meaningful action to the whole. So I'm pleased to see people itching to get started and make a difference to the future of healthy life extension technology over at the Immortality Institute:

27 May - 2 June : The world will be introduced to the concept of longevity, and healthy lifespan extension.

It will be done by simply having every available member of ImmInst subscribing to this thread, following this thread, participating in this thread, and achieving the goals of this thread so that between those dates every single member who has participated will be mobilised to post between 10 and 20 flyers in very public places in their local area. Inexpensive, easy, effective.

It is late February. I am arbitrarily designating 1 month to discussion time, 1 month to flyer design, and 1 month to movement organisation. 3 months maximum. The date I am picking then is the week from 27 May 2007 - 2 June 2007. In that week I intend to have every single member of ImmInst who is functionally capable of doing so, to have printed themselves a number of "Awareness Raising Flyers" and to then post these flyers to strategic points in their local city, suburb, town, village, workplace, university, bus stop and any other place they can get to.

Simple and to the point - a clearly defined goal that everyone can help accomplish. Very good. The discussion thread and flier design thread are both active, so jump on in and show your support!

As I often repeat here, the future is a matter of what you make of it, and the greatest hurdle to the rapid development of medical technologies to greatly extend the healthy human life span is the absence of widespread support and understanding for such a goal. That is a problem everyone can help with - you don't have to be a scientist or wealthy to reach out and educate a couple of people on the real prospects for progress towards greater longevity. If our future is one of frailty, suffering and death, it will be because we have failed to convince our fellows of the plausibility and merits of working towards a cure for aging.

Technorati tags: activism, life extension

Posted by Reason at February 26, 2007 8:40 PM | TrackBack (0)