Vladimir De Thezier

Vladimir De Thezier is a techno-progressive artist and activist who has contributed content to the website of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives.

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Bio

Vladimir De Thézier is a social entrepreneur and creative professional. He serves as the Special Projects Manager for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET). De Thézier is developing Democratech, a project which organizing citizen conferences on emerging technologies in order to create a more democratic rapport between citizens, experts and political authorities.

Home page: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/dethezier/

Articles

TechnoProgressive: The Manifesto of a Technologically Savvy Progressive Artivist

Vladimir De Thézier

Ethical Technology Blog

2007-02-06

My name is Vladimir De Thézier but my family and friends call me “Justice”… much like golf superstar Eldrick Woods is called “Tiger” since birth.

Born in Montreal, I am a Haitian-Canadian man who prefers to be called a “North American” to acknowledge all the cultures which have influenced me. I’ve always felt that if one doesn’t indulge in national, ethnic or racial pride, one can avoid the cognitive dissonance brought upon by national, ethnic or racial shame…

I read widely as a youth, which nurtured my life-long rationalism and cosmopolitanism. However, at the age of 17, my alienation from apolitism and atheism drove me to a 10-year search for meaning. I explored a variety of ideologies and religions (from anarchism to Co-Freemasonry!) but gradually became disillusioned with each of them.

My study of, and dismay at, the consequences of both nationalism and capitalism made me choose international democratic socialism as my political philosophy; while my introduction to neurotheology, which explains the evolutionary and neuro-psychological origins of spirituality, made me conclude that agnostic posthumanism was the only intellectually honest position for me to take.

In 2002, my aspiring work in experimental film screenwriting, and growing interest in the promises and dangers of emerging technologies, led me to embrace democratic transhumanism, an attempt by ethical futurist James Hughes to expand the middle ground between technorealism and techno-utopianism, as the most comprehensive synthesis of my goals.

However, the more years passed, the more my angst grew about how the term “transhumanist” may give me an identity at the cost of achieving of my goals. So I and other ideological refugees, like master rhetorician Dale Carrico, seized on the need to articulate a new language to make real progress in discussions of radical technology.

In 2004, I began to volunteer as the Special Projects Manager of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, a think tank founded by Hughes to offer industry and policymakers the best assessments of the scientific benefits and risks of new developments in technology from a post-Naturalist, post-Christian and post-Humanist yet progressive or, more succinctly, a technoprogressive perspective.

As a technoprogressive social entrepreneur, I am developing Democratech, a project to organize and maintain citizen conferences on emerging technologies in Montreal. My goal is to establish a more democratic rapport between citizens, experts and political authorities. As a technoprogressive creative professional, I am aware of the power of the media to create great social change. My goal is to deliver compelling entertainment through films and documentaries that will inspire audiences to get involved in the issues that affect us all.

But what does a technoprogressive believe you ask?

I can only speak for myself when I say that I believe democracy is a human invention and a political “technology” which historically is still very young and whose power and potential has neither been fully understood nor realized. As a human invention, it is imperfect and will always be but it also can be improved, just as a car or computer or, using a better analogy, a software programme, can be upgraded. Politics is like the “Operating System” of society and to remain free and prosperous, it is to our advantage, in addition to being our civic duty, to constantly improve democracy as the least worst of all possible political “Operating Systems”.

As a technoprogressive, I believe that we must continue tweaking the political technology of democracy to defuse our most pressing local, national and global problems. Otherwise, the realization that the barbarians have been within our gates all along will occur with the disorienting abruptness of a detonation.