I was originally inspired to formally join the transhumanist movement in 2001 by Max More, the true founder, and his multi-talented wife Natasha Vita-More. They are pictured above chatting up William Shatner at Transvision 2007 in Chicago.

Basically, Max and Natasha demonstrated to me that discussing futuristic technologies is not necessarily a nerdy endeavor limited to the hacker in the basement. Other inspiring figures were Anders and Eliezer, but I’ll leave that to another post.

In my opinion, the writings of Max and Natasha are quite significant, and every geek should have exposure to the ideas.

Max More: “The Extropian Principles: a Transhumanist Declaration”
Natasha Vita-More: Nanofactory or AGI: Which technology could cure humanity’s many problems?