The Lifeboat Foundation

Now I feel this deserves a mention - The Lifeboat Foundation:

According to their statement - 'The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to ensuring that humanity safely adopts increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI as we move towards a technological singularity.

Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, including new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.'

Also, the list of Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board members today totaled 200 with the addition of multidisciplinary scientist/author Howard Bloom, who is bringing together space scientists to explore beaming solar power from space and setting up a colony off-planet in case humanity is extinguished due to warfare.

The Board's members, grouped in 23 sub-boards, include inventor/futurist Ray Kurzweil; Alex Wolszczan, discoverer of the first planets ever found outside our solar system; Ian Foster, "father of grid computing," Frank Wilczek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics; Sir Clive W.J. Granger, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Economics; and Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Board's research programs, designed to deal with future existential risks, now total 21. The newest: LifePreserver (radical life-extending and life-enhancing technologies), PersonalityPreserver (such as uploading), SeedPreserver (storing seeds in a safe location), BioPreserver (preserving animal life and diversity on the planet), ClimateShield (protecting against harmful climate changes), EnergyPreserver (such as solar power from space), InfoPreserver (preserving civlization's information), and NeuroethicsShield (prevent abuse from neuropharmaceuticals, neurodevices, and neurodiagnostics).

What a community of thinkers! Lets hope such a vision comes married with humanity & spirit...