London Futurists
Anticipating and managing exponential impact - hosts David Wood and Calum Chace
Calum Chace is a sought-after keynote speaker and best-selling writer on artificial intelligence. He focuses on the medium- and long-term impact of AI on all of us, our societies and our economies. He advises companies and governments on AI policy.
His non-fiction books on AI are Surviving AI, about superintelligence, and The Economic Singularity, about the future of jobs. Both are now in their third editions.
He also wrote Pandora's Brain and Pandora’s Oracle, a pair of techno-thrillers about the first superintelligence. He is a regular contributor to magazines, newspapers, and radio.
In the last decade, Calum has given over 150 talks in 20 countries on six continents. Videos of his talks, and lots of other materials are available at https://calumchace.com/.
He is co-founder of a think tank focused on the future of jobs, called the Economic Singularity Foundation. The Foundation has published Stories from 2045, a collection of short stories written by its members.
Before becoming a full-time writer and speaker, Calum had a 30-year career in journalism and in business, as a marketer, a strategy consultant and a CEO. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University, which confirmed his suspicion that science fiction is actually philosophy in fancy dress.
David Wood is Chair of London Futurists, and is the author or lead editor of twelve books about the future, including The Singularity Principles, Vital Foresight, The Abolition of Aging, Smartphones and Beyond, and Sustainable Superabundance.
He is also principal of the independent futurist consultancy and publisher Delta Wisdom, executive director of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation, Foresight Advisor at SingularityNET, and a board director at the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies). He regularly gives keynote talks around the world on how to prepare for radical disruption. See https://deltawisdom.com/.
As a pioneer of the mobile computing and smartphone industry, he co-founded Symbian in 1998. By 2012, software written by his teams had been included as the operating system on 500 million smartphones.
From 2010 to 2013, he was Technology Planning Lead (CTO) of Accenture Mobility, where he also co-led Accenture’s Mobility Health business initiative.
Has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge, where he also undertook doctoral research in the Philosophy of Science, and a DSc from the University of Westminster.
London Futurists
The low-cost future of preserving brains, with Jordan Sparks
Our guest in this episode is Jordan Sparks, the founder and executive director of Oregon Brain Preservation (OBP), which is located at Salem, the capital city of Oregon. OBP offers the service of chemically preserving the brain in the hope of future restoration.
Previously, Jordan was a dentist and a computer programmer, and he was successful enough in those fields to generate the capital required to start OBP.
Brain preservation is a fascinating subject that we have covered in a number of recent episodes, in which we have interviewed Kenneth Hayworth, Max More, and Emil Kendziorra.
Most people whose brains have been preserved for future restoration have undergone cryopreservation, which involves cooling the brain (and sometimes the whole body) down to a very low temperature and keeping it that way. OBP does offer that service occasionally, but its focus – which may be unique – is chemical fixation of the brain.
Previous episodes on biostasis and brain preservation:
- The case for brain preservation, with Kenneth Hayworth
- Cryonics, cryocrastination, and the future: changing minds, with Max More
- Stop cryocrastinating! with Emil Kendziorra
Additional selected follow-ups:
- Oregon Brain Preservation
- The costs of the services provided by Oregon Brain Preservation
- Focused Ultrasound: A Promising Tool for Cryonics - Tomorrow Bio
- Investigation of Electromagnetic Resonance Rewarming Enhanced by Magnetic Nanoparticles for Cryopreservation - Langmuir
- Pre-epithelialized cryopreserved tracheal allograft for neo-trachea flap engineering - Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
- Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation by Robert McIntyre and Gregory Fahy - Cryobiology
- Oregon's Death with Dignity Act
- 14-year-old girl who died of cancer wins right to be cryogenically frozen - The Guardian
Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
