| Type | Transhumanist association |
|---|---|
| Launch | June 14, 2008, in World of Warcraft, according to Giulio Prisco |
| Founding participants | Giulio Prisco, William Sims Bainbridge and Philippe Van Nedervelde, according to Prisco |
| Meeting spaces | Second Life and World of Warcraft |
The Order of Cosmic Engineers (OCE) was a transhumanist association launched in 2008 through meetings in virtual worlds. Its founders linked technological transformation with a search for meaning and community, presenting cosmic engineering as a shared long-term undertaking.[1][2]
Origins and early meetings
In a June 15, 2008 report, Giulio Prisco distinguished an announcement at a Second Life conference on June 5 from the launch in Silvermoon City, within World of Warcraft, on June 14. Writing in 2009, he named William Sims Bainbridge and Philippe Van Nedervelde alongside himself as participants in founding the Order.[1][2]
Van Nedervelde presented the project at Terasem’s virtual amphitheatre in Second Life on July 20, 2008. An adapted version of his lecture, published in the Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology, preserves its rationale and excerpts from the Order’s Prospectus.[3]
The proposed “unreligion”
Van Nedervelde called the proposed form of association an “unreligion.” He argued that scientific inquiry had weakened religious belief without replacing the supportive communities religions provided. His alternative would combine inquiry into existential questions with selected social and ethical features of religion, excluding what he considered harmful. This was a founder’s organizational ideal, not a neutral account of religion’s social effects.[3]
Prisco’s 2009 essay supplies a related motivation: he wanted transhumanist visions to speak to hopes and emotions as well as intellectual argument. He described the Order’s project as joining engineering with neo-futurist art and the cosmic spirituality of Russian cosmism. This helps explain why an engineering association also sought a spiritual vocabulary.[2]
From virtual habitats to cosmic intelligence
The Prospectus excerpt sets out a sequence: build a community, develop virtual habitats for permanent residence, enhance minds and bodies, preserve and upload minds, then extend intelligence through matter toward cosmic scales and the creation of new universes. Van Nedervelde explains “computronium” as an ideal material substrate optimized for intelligent computation. The sequence connects individual survival to a collective transformation of the universe; these are proposed goals, not a record of accomplished engineering.[3]
In 2010, James Hughes interpreted the Order as a form of naturalistic cosmotheology: godlike beings might emerge through the development of intelligence within nature rather than exist outside it. His account also discusses the Order’s speculation about earlier civilizations and possible influence from the future. Hughes wrote from the transhumanist network, explicitly noting shared IEET connections with OCE figures. The distinction concerns the proposed origin of such beings; it does not demonstrate their existence.[4]
Virtual worlds as meeting places
Virtual worlds served a more immediate purpose. Bainbridge’s historical account describes participants at the Silvermoon meeting represented by Horde avatars. Prisco’s 2009 essay advertised virtual events on scientific, cultural, artistic and spiritual topics, open across geographical distances. These accounts document or describe ways of gathering around a shared project. Meeting through avatars was different from the proposed permanent habitation of synthetic realities or transfer of minds into them.[6][2]
Interpretation and later history
Anthropologist Abou Farman places the Order within a tension in transhumanist spirituality: some participants criticize religion while valuing its capacity to motivate and sustain community. His 2019 study discusses Van Nedervelde’s existential questions and cautions against simply treating transhumanism as religion in disguise. Within Hieropedia’s classification, OCE is relevant as a human-organized attempt to give technological expectations a communal and spiritual form.[5]
In his 2019 account, Bainbridge describes the Order as effectively succeeded by Turing Church around 2010. Prisco’s 2023 recollection likewise treats OCE as a past undertaking and recalls organizing its World of Warcraft opening with Bainbridge. These participant histories support a connection between projects, but do not establish a formal institutional merger or an exact end date.[6][7]
See also
References
- Giulio Prisco, Silvermoon Meeting: Launch of the Order of Cosmic Engineers in World of Warcraft, Extropy mailing list (15 June 2008)
- Giulio Prisco, Le visioni cosmiche del transumanismo forte, Associazione Italiana Transumanisti (3 May 2009)
- Philippe Van Nedervelde, Awaken the Universe — Introducing the Order of Cosmic Engineers, Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology 3(3), adapted lecture (20 July 2008), pp. 1, 4–7
- James Hughes, Problems of Transhumanism: Atheism vs. Naturalist Theologies, IEET (14 January 2010), The Order of Cosmic Engineers section
- Abou Farman, Mind out of Place: Transhuman Spirituality, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 87(1), 57–80 (2019), pp. 59–62; doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfy039
- William Sims Bainbridge, Turing Church, World Religions and Spirituality Project (2019), timeline and Founder/Group History
- Giulio Prisco, Remembering the first scientific conference in World of Warcraft (2008), Turing Church (25 May 2023)
Founders’ publications and participant accounts supply most of the institutional history. Scholarly analysis provides context, not a complete organizational archive. The sources do not establish membership totals, a formal dissolution or legal succession, or the realization of the proposed technologies.