futurism

Benjamin Peters (born 1980) is an American media scholar, author, and professor known for his work on the history of communication technologies, information theory, and the social dimensions of digital networks. He serves as the Hazel Rogers Professor of Communication at the University of Tulsa and has held affiliations with several prominent research institutions. Peters is best known for his book How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (2016), which explores the failed attempts to build a nationwide computer network in the Soviet Union and examines how social and political systems shape technological development. The work received widespread acclaim for its interdisciplinary approach, bridging media studies, history, and science and technology studies. He has also edited Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture (2016), contributing to critical discourse around the language and concepts underpinning the digital age. Peters’s scholarship carries resonance for those interested in the intersection of technology, human potential, and collective aspiration. By investigating how societies envision and fail to realize transformative technological projects, his work illuminates the deeply human—and often ideological—dimensions of networked communication. His research reminds us that the tools we build to connect and elevate humanity are always embedded in moral, political, and even spiritual frameworks. For communities exploring themes of theosis and the cooperative pursuit of transcendence through technology, Peters’s insights into the promises and pitfalls of networked societies offer valuable perspective on how human aspiration and systemic constraints interact in the ongoing project of building a better world.

Bernardo Vicente is an economist and researcher deeply interested in the intersection of economics, technology, and culture. He holds a degree in business administration and accounting from Lisbon Polytechnic Institute, along with a specialization in business analytics. Driven by a desire to leverage technology for societal betterment, he has developed an innovative economic theory known as “Harberger Georgism.” Harberger Georgism builds upon the principles of Georgism and Harberger taxation, exploring how Web3 technologies can sustainably develop the digital era and enhance the physical world. This theory aims to potentiate development in the physical world using economic strategies. Currently, Bernardo volunteers as a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, contributing his expertise to the advancement of blockchain technology. His work explores the teleology and utility of emerging technologies like NFTs and the metaverse, aiming to ensure their positive impact on society.

Cameron Dayton is an American video game creative director, novelist, and writer known for his work in the gaming industry and speculative fiction. He has held prominent creative roles at several major studios, contributing to well-known franchises and original intellectual properties. Dayton served as creative director at Certain Affinity and has worked in narrative and creative leadership positions across the video game industry. He is also the author of the novel Etherwalker , a science-fantasy work set in a far-future world where technology and myth have intertwined, exploring themes of lost civilizations, human potential, and the rediscovery of powerful ancient technologies. His fiction often inhabits the intersection of epic fantasy and science fiction, imagining futures in which humanity’s relationship with technology is both perilous and transformative. Dayton has roots in the Latter-day Saint community, and his creative work reflects an imagination shaped by themes resonant with Mormon Transhumanist thought—particularly the idea that humanity’s trajectory involves the responsible stewardship of extraordinary power, and that the boundaries between the mundane and the transcendent are more porous than they appear. His speculative worlds frequently explore the tension between knowledge and wisdom, technological mastery and moral responsibility, echoing the Mormon Transhumanist conviction that scientific and technological progress are inseparable from ethical and spiritual development. His storytelling invites readers to consider what it means for ordinary individuals to inherit or rediscover capacities that border on the divine—a narrative arc that parallels the Latter-day Saint doctrine of theosis and the transhumanist aspiration toward radical human flourishing.

Carver Mead (born 1934) is an American engineer, physicist, and pioneer of modern microelectronics whose foundational contributions to semiconductor theory and very-large-scale integration (VLSI) helped make the silicon age possible. A Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology, Mead spent decades at the frontier of what computation could become, both as a theorist and as a practical builder of systems. Mead’s career achievements span an extraordinary range. He developed key models for understanding transistor behavior at the nanoscale, co-authored (with Lynn Conway) the landmark 1980 textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems , and essentially invented the methodology by which engineers design the dense integrated circuits that now inhabit every corner of modern life. He also pioneered neuromorphic engineering—the design of circuits that mimic the computational architecture of biological neural systems—and founded companies that applied these principles to sensory processing and analog computation. In 2022, he was awarded the Harold Pender Award; earlier recognition includes the Lemelson-MIT Prize and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. What distinguishes Mead as a thinker is not only what he built but how he understood the act of building. He insisted that Moore’s Law is fundamentally a story about human belief: “Moore’s Law is really a thing about human activity, it’s about vision, it’s about what you’re allowed to believe. Because people are really limited by their beliefs, they limit themselves by what they allow themselves to believe about what is possible.” In this reading, technological progress is not an autonomous material force but a function of expanded imagination—a civilizational act of faith in possibility. This framing resonates deeply with traditions that locate human creativity within a larger divine economy, where intelligence, rightly directed and disciplined by moral courage, participates in the ongoing work of creation. Mead’s insistence that the boundary between what is and what could be is first a boundary of belief, and only second a boundary of physics, echoes the Mormon transhumanist conviction that humanity’s divine future is not given passively but willed, practiced, and built—one hard-won increment of understanding at a time.

Dr. Emile Alexandrov is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and visiting scholar at Waseda University, Tokyo. His research focuses on metaphysics across Eastern and Western traditions. He earned his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame Australia, and has extensive research and teaching experience in areas ranging from contemporary American and post-Kantian German philosophy to classical metaphysical traditions in the Graeco-Arabic world, Buddhism, and Daoism. Dr. Alexandrov has held academic appointments at the University of Erfurt in Germany, Novosibirsk State University and the University of Tyumen in Russia, and National Taiwan University in Taiwan. He is the author of The Other Platonist Beginning — Heidegger and Neoplatonism and the forthcoming Metaphysics and Ineffable . With Dr O’Neill, he co-directs the biennial International Symposium on Buddhism and Neoplatonism . Alongside Dr. Steve Stakland, he also co-leads the American Philosophy Series at Routledge.