Ahead of a Transpolitica coordination hangout later today (Monday 30th March), here are updates on four plans that are currently under consideration:

1. Towards “Politics 2.0”

The previous plan of record is that a new Transpolitica book, provisionally entitled “Politics 2.0”, will be collaboratively created and released, with timetable as follows:

• Potential chapter writers should submit short abstracts by 21st April
• Complete publication-ready text should be submitted by the end of May
• An e-book will be available by 21st June.

What’s now under consideration is that the chapters of this book should all be published online, to increase readership. This publication would take place after the same sort of group review that preceded the publication of the first book in the Transpolitica series.

It remains to be decided which themes will have most focus in this new book. Ideally, topics from the first book which are generating the most reaction will be revisited in the second book.

2. Opening up readership of the first Transpolitica book

The ideas in the chapters of the first Transpolitica book, “Anticipating tomorrow’s politics”, deserve wider discussion. Two steps might aid this:

• Publishing all the chapters online, freely accessible (in the same way that is proposed above for the second book in the series)
• Finding and supporting a discussion forum (Reddit?) in which these chapters can be collaboratively debated.

3. Supporting the Transhumanist Party policy debate

The Transhumanist Party in the UK has published, on its own forums, a series of initial thought-pieces covering policy areas such as defence, economy, education, environment, the EU, foreign policy, health, judicial, political reform, and social. Transhumanist Party members will be revising these draft policy documents ahead of presenting them for formal approval at a forthcoming general meeting of the party.

Although some of the policies under discussion have a UK-flavour, most of them are likely to be relevant to other transhumanist political parties around the world. A good project for Transpolitica supporters would be to review one or more of these draft policy documents and provide brief, measured feedback on these documents. Members of the Transhumanist Party will then have the option to consider including some of the ideas arising in new versions of the policy documents.

Note: to join the UK Transhumanist Party, or to make a donation to support the work it is carrying out, see this link.

4. Refreshing the Transpolitica Manifesto

Recent expressions of the ideas in the Transpolitica Manifesto, for example at the recent launch event in London, have moved beyond the language currently on the Transpolitica website. For example, the online manifesto has eight headlines, whereas this (newer) diagram shows ten:

The online manifesto needs refreshing. In parallel, the ideas in the manifesto could usefully feature in new graphics and/or video resources:

• We need combinations of imagery and wording, which, once published, will hopefully be widely copied across social media, on account of their mix of graphic appeal and verbal appeal
• We also need videos that take these ideas from a static display into something more dynamic.