Transpolitica’s Consultants, Writers, and Researchers
David Wood
David W. Wood, D.Sc., was one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry. He is now a futurist activist, consultant, speaker, and writer.
As Chair of London Futurists, David has organised over 250 public meetings since March 2008 on futurist, transhumanist, technoprogressive, and singularitarian topics. Membership of London Futurists now exceeds 9,000.
In his professional life, David spent 25 years designing, implementing, and avidly using smart mobile devices, including ten years with pioneering PDA manufacturer Psion PLC, and ten more with smartphone operating system specialist Symbian Ltd, which he co-founded in 1998. At different times, his executive responsibilities at Psion and Symbian included software development, technical consulting, partnering and ecosystem management, and research and innovation. By 2012, his software for UI and application frameworks had been included on 500 million smartphones from companies such as Nokia, Samsung, Fujitsu, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson.
From 2010 to 2013, David was Technology Planning Lead (CTO) of Accenture Mobility, where he also co-led Accenture’s Mobility Health business initiative.
As Principal of the independent futurist consultancy and publisher Delta Wisdom, David currently helps clients around the world to anticipate the dramatic impact of rapidly changing technology on human individuals and communities. Via Delta Wisdom, he highlights opportunities to apply technology in new solutions to deep-rooted problems.
David’s most recent book is The Singularity Principles. His previous books include Smartphones and Beyond, The Abolition of Aging, Sustainable Superabundance, Vital Foresight, RAFT 2035, and Transcending Politics. He was also the lead editor of the volume Anticipating 2025.
David has a triple first class mathematics degree from Cambridge and undertook doctoral research in the Philosophy of Science. In November 2005 David received an honorary Doctorate in Science (D.Sc.) from the University of Westminster, in recognition of his services to the smartphone industry.
T3 magazine included him in 2009 in their list of the “100 most influential people in technology”. In 2010 he featured in the world’s first Augmented Reality CV.
He is co-founder of the futurist wiki H+Pedia, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), and sits on the Board of the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies).
He was Secretary of the Board of Directors of Humanity+ from March 2015 to September 2019.
He blogs at dw2blog.com and tweets as @dw2.
In David’s view, the most important insight of transhumanism concerns the magnitude of the forthcoming technology-enabled transformation in the human condition. It’s not just that this transformation is possible. It’s not just that this transformation could be relatively imminent – happening while many people alive today are still in the primes of their lives. It’s that this transformation, handled wisely, could have an enormous positive upside, and is deeply desirable.
However, the transformation is by no means inevitable. Over the next few years, humanity faces some hard, critical choices – choices that will determine our future. If we choose poorly, technology will do much more harm than good. If we choose poorly, a bleak future awaits us – wretched environmental decline, bitter social divisions, and a rapid descent into a dismal new dark age. Instead of the flourishing of the better angels of our human nature, it will be our inner demons that technology magnifies. Hence the urgent need for conscious, thoughtful reflection and action.
Alexander Karran
Alexander Karran became, in May 2015, the first candidate to run for election in a UK general election with a purely technoprogressive transhumanist agenda. This was in the seat of Liverpool Walton.
Alexander has a broad academic background, holding a PhD in Psychology (focused on bio-cybernetic loops and physiological computing), a Masters degree in Computer Network Security (focused on cyber-security and digital forensic analysis) and an undergraduate degree in computer science.
Alexanders’s research for Transpolitica has included:
- Evaluating the published policy positions of politicians from parties throughout the UK
- Co-editing the book “Envisaging Politics 2.0: How AIs, cyborgs, and transhumanism can enhance democracy and improve society”, for which he also submitted a chapter positing solutions to errors in human decision making using technology
- Submitting a briefing paper on behalf of Transpolitica as part of the UK Commons Select Committee robotics and artificial intelligence inquiry.
Alexander is a public speaker who advocates for longevity science, artificial intelligence in education and governance, and the wise application of technology to the problems faced by modern society. He is also a keen follower of current trends in accelerating technologies and their potential to transform human behaviour.
Alexander is currently an academic at Manchester Metropolitan University, giving lectures on data science, cyber-security policy, future trends in cyber-security and digital forensics and programming.
George Pór
George Pór is a Visiting Professor at the Management Center Innsbruck. His academic posts have included London School of Economics, INSEAD, University of Amsterdam, UC Berkeley, California Institute of Integral Studies, Université de Paris, and University of Lund (Sweden).
George served as the Chief Architect of the International Society for Systems Sciences’ Collective Intelligence Initiative, and has been an advisor to the Integral City collective.
Besides being the Founder and Senior Consultant of CommunityIntelligence Ltd, George is also a Fellow of Future Considerations, an award-winning organisational transformation agency. His clients included Campus de Excelencia Internacional Cataluña Sur, Climate and Development Knowledge Network, European Commission, European Investment Bank, Ford Motor Co., Greenpeace, Intel, Shell, UN Development Programme, World Wildlife Foundation, and numerous other organisations around the world.
George has been publishing the Blog of Collective Intelligence since 2003, has written over 100 papers and articles on related subjects in 6 languages, and contributed chapters to several books.
George has been a futurist and observer of the extropian/transhumanist ecosystem since the mid-80s. He pioneered such theoretical and methodological frameworks, as knowledge ecology, knowledge gardening, innovation architecture, Chaordic Chat, shared mindfulness and collective sentience. His current research interests include: learning in and by complex adaptive social system, learning regions and society, (global-scale) collective intelligence and wisdom, evolutionary guidance systems, global brain studies, global solution networks, collective sentience, and the emergence of higher “we-spaces.” He lives on the edge because, as he likes to say, if one doesn’t live on the edge one takes up too much space.
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