Dr. Natasha Vita-More

The KurzweilAI.net article Strategic Sustainable Brain began with

Each one of us has been entrusted with the care and nourishment of what might be the most extraordinary and complex creation in the universe. Home to mind and personality, the human brain archives cherished memories and hopes for the future. It arranges and coordinates the elements of consciousness that gives us purpose, passion, motion, and emotion.
 
But the brain is too fragile. It is far too vulnerable to be allowed to continue in its current state. In order to properly sustain the brain, we need to know what it likes, the challenges it craves, the rest it requires, and the protection it deserves. In short, the brain must have a strategy for its future.
 
But is it really necessary to take action now? I submit that if events have altered the day-to-day operations of the brain, affecting how it performs its operations and whether it can sustain for the long haul, then now is the right time to take action.

Natasha Vita-More, MSc, BFA, MA, Ph.D. was the author of this article and is the president of the Extropy Institute. This institute is a networking ideas exchange devoted to developing strategies for the future. Extropy is a symbol for continued progress and reflects the extent of a living or organizational system’s intelligence, functional order, vitality, and capacity and drive for improvement. Extropy is an essential element of transhumanism.
 
She is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists, founder of Transhumanist Arts & Culture, Honorary Vice-Chair of the World Transhumanist Association, Senior Associate with the Foresight Institute, and advisor to Alcor Life Extension Foundation. She is Outreach Director of The First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence.
 
Natasha authored the Extropic Art Manifesto, onboard the Cassini spacecraft mission to study Saturn and its moons. She is the author of Ageless Thinking. Her current Primo Posthuman radical body design combines the aesthetic engineering of nanotechnology, AiS (artificial intelligent skin), IA (intelligence augmentation), and replaceable body parts that are upgraded, augmented and streamlined.
 
The themes of Natasha’s art identify the cultural vanguard and epitomize changing values that bolster the spirit of our times. Presently her focus recognizes the ideological splits facing superlongevity, the aesthetics in our highly technological future, and their effects on culture. Her work has been exhibited at Brooks Memorial Museum, Telluride Film Festival, Women In Video, United States Film Festival, and London Contemporary Museum.
 
Natasha earned her MSc from the University of Houston Future Studies program, a BFA at University of Memphis and worked on her MA at Accademia Belle Arti, Italy. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Plymouth, England. She has been featured on BBC, Dateline, PBS, TLC, and Discovery, appeared on national talk shows, and was featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Shift, Mean Magazine, LA Weekly, Harper’s Bazaar, and Marie Claire.
 
Watch her SENS 3 presentation Brave biological design — how biotechnology, generative media, and other currents are changing creative inquiry in the arts & sciences.
 
Read her LinkedIn profile.