Biographically, David Pearce can be classified as a
thinker and
a
political leader.
There is little background information available on David Pearce. In particular,
his date of birth is unknown to the public, though from the dates of his actions, it can be
inferred that he was most likely born in the mid 1970s. It is only known that he
went to Oxford university (west of London), supposedly in the Brasenose
College division specificly, and as of 2005, he lives in Brighton (south of
London).
David Pearce's accomplishments:
David Pearce was the co-founder (with Nick Bostrom) of the
World Transhumanist Association (often abbreviated as WTA), at Oxford University in 1998.
As of 2005, the World Transhumanist Association has about
3000 members worldwide, with about half in the United States,
and large numbers in other english-speaking
countries. A transhumanist is a person that supports
transhumanism, the ideal of modifying the genome of human
zygotes (either some of them or all of them) so as to
increase human ability, versatility, resilience, and efficiency of living.
Other methods that serve the same purpose, most notably cybernetics,
are also considered. Transhumanism was not originally David Pearce's
or Nick Bostrom's idea, nor were they the first to popularize it.
Transhumanism was originally popularized by Max More, the founder
of the extropy institute (founded in 1988),
though David Pearce and Nick Bostrom were the first people to create a political organization
specificly for the purpose of supporting transhumanism.
David Pearce owns literally hundreds of domain names,
all of which link to each other, for the purpose of having them listed at
the top of search engine results. Those websites largely consist of published
research papers from laboratories all over the world,
and descriptions of, and arguments for, David Pearce's ideals.
David Pearce's main ideal is that of bioengineered
hedonism and negative hedonism (abolition of suffering) for all
conscious beings, which is described in his main online
publication 'The Hedonistic Imperative', which was first published on the
internet in 1996. He has specificly emphasized hedonism that is based
upon the sensation that is produced by the illegal drug MDMA.
That has earned David Pearce his place as a pivotal character in the
history of sensation-centric ideals. David Pearce
himself is conscious of that history, as is evident from the information on
utilitarian hedonism on his websites.