Natasha Vita-More on Whole Body Prosthetic

It has been almost two months since I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Dr. Natasha Vita-More at her family house in Scottsdale, Arizona. Vita-More has been at the fore-front for several decades and her projects such as Primo Post Human have lead the NY Times to call her “the first female philosopher of transhumanism.” Thus I was very happy to do my first in-person interview with Natasha and discuss her ideas about Whole Body Prosthetic and Substrate Autonomous, Networked Avatar Bodies by Design. During our 36 min conversation with Dr. Vita-More we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: her whole body prosthetic project; backing up the body as well as the mind; “back-casting” her vision and ultimate goals; the problem of identity in moving from one substrate to another; the timeline and scientific break-throughs in robotics, artificial intelligence and cognitive neuroscience necessary to make the whole body prosthetic a reality; consciousness and quantum mechanics; the reception of the Transhumanist Reader; dealing with skeptics and whether the world is ready for transhumanism and radical life-extension…