History of London Futurists
In its present form, London Futurists combines two organisational strands:
- A series of events organised by David Wood, mainly at Birkbeck College, on the general themes of transhumanism, dating back to an event held on the 15th of March 2008. These meetings were publicised via the UKH+ group on Facebook
- A meetup group “London Futurists” which was created by Richie Arnold on 30th May 2009, and which quickly started to provide additional publicity for the UKH+ events
When the original chair of the meetup group resigned from that post in February 2010, David Wood stepped forwards into that role, recognising the value of meetup.com in reaching potential new attendees at the meetings.
Note: the UKH+ series of meetings was itself a continuation of the Extrobritannia events organised by Fabio Albertario (“estropico”) from 2002 to 2007. Archive messages in the Extrobritannia newsgroup document:
- the start of the new series of events, and the selection of Birkbeck College as a new venue
- the creation of the UKH+ group on Facebook, on 28th February 2008.
Some of the very oldest Facebook articles about UKH+ seem to be no longer accessible, but here are a couple from early 2008:
- A post on 29th Feb 2008 giving the context (“related websites”) for the new group
- A report of the event on 14 June 2008, that also mentions the events in March and May of that year.
The dedicated website LondonFuturists.com was created in 2013.
Multi-speaker London Futurists events that have lasted an entire day, or longer, include:
- “Humanity+ UK 2010”, 24 April 2010
- “Humanity+ UK 2011”, 11 January 2011
- “Beyond Human”, 8 October 2011
- “Anticipating 2025”, 22-23 March 2014
- “Anticipating 2040”, 3-4 October 2015
- “Transpolitica 2016”, 3 December 2016
- “Agenda for the Future”, 2 September 2017
- “Universal Basic Income and/or Alternatives, 2 June 2018
- “TransVision 2019: Humanity+ @ London”, 6-7 July 2019
London Futurists 