We need to talk about transhumanism

This weekend, hundreds of people from across the globe will gather in Madrid to discuss how to turn themselves into a new species.

The occasion is TransVision, the world’s biggest annual meet-up of transhumanists — and probably the most important intellectual summit you’ve never heard of. This year, anti-ageing specialist Aubrey de Grey will explain why he thinks most people alive today have a 50/50 chance of living to a thousand years old. The CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Max More, will discuss cryogenics, the process by which the newly deceased are frozen in giant, stainless steel vats and preserved for resurrection down the line. And Google’s Ray Kurzweil will talk about the ‘singularity’: the moment in our not-too-distant future — he reckons around 2045 — when artificial intelligence finally outstrips the collective brainpower of mankind and absorbs us into its plans.

Until recently, I — like most people, I suspect — believed this stuff to be pure science fiction. But then browsing aimlessly one night in March, I stumbled upon a passing reference to a transhumanist political party that had apparently put up a candidate for election in 2015.