While reviewing the Lifeboat Foundation page on Wikipedia, I noticed that someone put up a slightly shoddy Wikipedia article on me recently that has this flattering opener:

A well known and often quoted transhumanist, singularitarian and moderately extropian blogger regularly publishing his views and insights on the blog Accelerating Future. His blog has recently become more visited than several major blogs casting Michael headfirst into transhumanist celebrity status, and his posts are now widely regarded as canon for the movement.

Makes me sound alright, but it’s slightly silly. “Headfirst into transhumanist celebrity status” especially causes snickering, and I’ll address that below.

Clarification: I don’t self-identify as “extropian”, even though I have many extropian friends and think that Max More and Natasha Vita-More are great and fun people to be around. I think “transhumanism” and “singularitarian” are obscure enough self-labels as it is. If you give yourself too many niche labels, it’s like jumping up and down and saying, “legitimate publications, please never do an article on me!” Still, I found the Extropian Principles to be an inspiring document when I read it, and my first exposure to movement transhumanism (in 2001) was through Extropy.org, though I quickly found a bunch of other sites.

Back to the Wikipedia article, it’s tagged as lacking references from reliable third-party publications. Theoretically, I guess it might be possible to drag together an article based on the only two mainstream publications that have referenced me or my blog: Psychology Today and Attack of the Show, but that isn’t much. It’s probably best to wait until more third-party publications decide to do write-ups on Accelerating Future. Otherwise it will just piss off the Wikipedia editors, which will fight to prevent there being an article on me even when and if I do gain a higher profile.

“Transhumanist celebrity”, that’s a cute line, and I appreciate everyone who reads this blog, but a “transhumanist celebrity” is practically a nobody in the wider world. References like this only reinforce the notion that transhumanism is a marginal navel-gazing subculture with little thought of the mainstream. Instead of marginalizing ourselves, we have to engage in mainstream policy discussions and philosophical discourses, and face the truth that we are a small movement with very limited resources. Otherwise, transhumanism is no different than thousands of other minor echo chamber-like philosophical schools.

Also, the info in general in that Wikipedia article is a bit old. My up-to-date bio is here.

Another point. Punditry is well and good, but useless if it has no impact on research that can actually help people. This is why the most successful branches of transhumanism are working on focused projects and do not actually market themselves as “transhumanist” at all. There is a definitely crossover between punditry and helpful research, however, so it’s not all clear-cut. Many of the heroes of the transhumanist movement are not visible pundits but researchers in AI, nanotechnology, and life extension that are actually doing the hard work of experimentation and engineering. My role is primarily that of a philosophical synthesizer, technology reporter, analyst, and communicator. I exist mostly to broadcast the work of useful researchers (who oftentimes lack skills for communicating to a wide audience) to the public, and hope that I can inspire interest that provides them with funding. They are the real heroes. Talented scientists, mathematicians, entrepreneurs, technology angels, and inventors.