Istvan doesn't expect to be the first Transhumanist in the White House, at
least yet, but he does have a statement to make.
Zoltan Istvan
I'm not naming names, but in the current race for US
president, there are certain major party candidates who
promise to accomplish all their goals and insist they'll be
just "terrific" in the process. Despite such confidence, no
candidate has set goals quite as ambitious as Transhumanist
Party candidate Zoltan Istvan, whose campaign promises
include not just a better life, but perhaps an endless one.
I recently chatted with Istvan via Skype about his
background, his platform that includes using science and
technology to pursue human immortality, and his current
cross-country road trip in a 40-foot rolling coffin called the
"immortality bus."
Before you read too much into what I've told you about him,
let's make one thing clear. Istvan -- one of 1,149 presidential
candidates legally registered with the Federal Election
Commission -- isn't a fringe tin-foil-hat type or a deluded
megalomaniac with a sci-fi obsession. But while some
highlights of his platform, such as a flat tax, legal marijuana
and campaign finance reform, overlap with others in the
race, it's safe to say his call for a "transhumanist olympics"
does not.
Transhumanism can be broadly defined as any use of
technology to augment the human experience, including
common things like airplanes. But looking ahead in time,
transhumanist discussions tend to veer toward the physical
merging of the human body with technology, a la implants,
nanobots or genetic engineering.
The Transhumanist Party is mainly just Istvan himself, and is
registered under Istvan's home address in Northern
California. Although he says a handful of other candidates
are "planning" to entering local races, the party does not yet
have registered members.
Out to make a statement
"At least for this next election cycle, we don't want to be that
party that throws away our vote to some candidate (such as
myself) who simply can not win," Istvan said. "So we
encourage support of the party by transhumanists, but not
formal membership."
The former journalist comes across as a regular family guy,
and pretty polished for a rookie politician based on my
hour-plus with him and videos of his speeches and
interviews you can watch online. He has that prototypical,
all-American made-for-TV look -- tall and broad-shouldered
with a strong jawline. He may be the most classically
handsome third-party candidate in US history.
In fact, his basic message about building a techno-Utopian
society initially seems like one nobody could possibly
disagree with. "I'm really interested in people's health and
how we can make people live a lot better and a lot longer,"
he said.
He rattles off amazing technological advances that are
already a reality, like mind-controlled prosthetics and
exoskeletons that allow disabled veterans to walk again,
robotic hearts taking on the epidemic of heart disease in
America, and cochlear implants allowing people to hear
again or for the first time -- all real and wonderful things we
love to write about here on CNET's Crave blog.
It's the kind of optimistic vision that can appeal to a broad
swath of Americans, but is likely to find the most resonance
at either side of the political spectrum -- at that funny spot
where the progressive end reaches around the mainstream
to shake hands with the Libertarian end, especially when
Istvan talks about redirecting resources from the military
industrial complex to create a "science industrial complex."
Imagining 'a sort of super-species'
"We don't need to be involved in so many far-off wars, we
can just be involved in people's health," he told me. "That's
where the great battles can be fought by America today...
against disease."
After painting a vivid, far-reaching Utopian panorama of our
present and near future, Istvan makes a pivot to his vision of
the more distant, more fully Transhuman future. At that
point, he instantly becomes controversial.
"We are saying, what's wrong with becoming gods through
science and technology?" Istvan told me. "I don't really like
using the word 'gods,' but what's wrong with becoming a sort
of super-species?"
8 sci-fi ideas that might become science fact pretty soon (pictures)
(Credit: HTT/JumpStartFund)
I pointed out that this is the place where most people --
especially those who don't take the words of Ray Kurzweil as
gospel -- would stop and say "what the what now?"
"There is a divide where people freak out," conceded Istvan,
who previously worked for National Geographic TV and now
mostly writes for columns about transhumanism for the
likes of The Huffington Post and Vice.
I made this point to him a couple of times, that it seems the
more productive political strategy is to focus on pushing
science and technology as transformative tools, not just for
how we order pizza, but for how well and how long we live.
For Istvan, answers to the short-term questions of human
health and well-being are really just byproducts that come
from tackling much bigger, longer-term questions that are
nothing short of existential, and a little mind-melting to be
honest.
"We need to find some way that the human being can
ascend to a higher intellectual and a higher philosophical
plane using science and tech," Istvan said. "We understand
that we're going to become other types of living entities and
those other types of entities might just be data, might just
be pure robotics, might be a mix of just becoming
cyborgs...digital immortality is probably the end game for
the species itself."
Yep, I think somewhere in those sentences is the "freak out"
divide that even Istvan himself acknowledges.
So far, small audiences only
Based on social-media followers and donations, Istvan
estimates that the Transhumanist Party has around 25,000
to 35,000 supporters. So far, Istvan seems to be garnering
the most attention from curious journalists -- his biggest
speech yet at the CTIA Super Mobility conference in Las
Vegas drew an audience of just a few dozen -- but he claims
to have the endorsement of Robert Kennedy's grandson,
writer and director Bobby Kennedy III. Perhaps that's a start.
Within the Transhumanist movement, the response to the
campaign seems more mixed. An academic analysis of
Transhumanist politics using Istvan as a case study
concludes his arguments are inconsistent, while an editorial
in Humanity+ Magazine questions the seriousness of the
campaign. As recently as Monday, it appears (via a typo-
laden blog post ) that the secretary of the Transhumanist
Party quit, citing Istvan's "non-inclusive leadership."
Istvan acknowledges that there are divisions within the
Transhumanism community, but he soldiers on. Istvan plans
to spend the fall stirring the pot with appearances that
emphasize both his atheism and his Transhumanist vision.
He'll be making that statement visually as well.
He's driving across the country campaigning from his 40-foot
(12-meter) "immortality bus" that has been remodeled to
look like a huge rolling coffin. This isn't just a politician who
wants to improve your health care, he wants to give you
Bella's happy ending from the "Twilight" series.