Lincoln Cannon to head Board of Advisors
Carl Youngblood co-founded the MTA in 2006 and has served as its President and CEO since 2021. He is engaged with the Association’s efforts to explore the intersection of Mormon theology and transhumanist philosophy. Among the many initiatives that Carl has been involved with, he has designed and built the Association's current website, which unifies all prior content in a single location using inspiring visuals and animations. ¶ Youngblood’s professional career spans more than two decades of full-stack software development at the intersection of Silicon Slopes and Silicon Valley. He was an early employee at Omniture (acquired by Adobe), a founding engineering leader at Divvy (a Utah-based unicorn startup), co-founder of Blockscale LLC (a blockchain services firm eventually contracted into Coinbase), and Senior Solutions Architect for Amazon Managed Blockchain at AWS. His technical fluency ranges from scalable web architecture to blockchain infrastructure—the kind of deep engineering experience that grounds his theological speculation in working knowledge of the systems he writes about. ¶ Under his leadership, the Association has developed its mission of promoting abundant human flourishing through the compassionate use of science and technology, fostering dialogue across secular and religious audiences and arguing that each has something essential to learn from the other. His writing, collected on his blog From the Depths, spans over a decade of conference presentations and theological essays: meditations on participatory resurrection, the alignment of artificial intelligence read through the Grand Council narrative, intelligence as eternal and multifaceted, and religion as social technology. He writes, as a colleague has observed, with warmth and accessibility on questions of momentous practical consequence—how to navigate faith crisis without losing faith’s power, how to think about resurrection as something we actively participate in rather than passively receive. ¶ Youngblood’s distinctive contribution to transhumanism is the integration of serious technical expertise with serious theological reflection. He embodies the Mormon transhumanist conviction that scientific and spiritual development are not parallel tracks but a single path—that the learning required to build better systems is continuous with the exaltation Mormon theology envisions, and that human ingenuity, rightly oriented, is itself a divine imperative.
The Mormon Transhumanist Association is pleased to announce the formation of a new board of advisors. The board of advisors will consist of former members of the board of directors, and its role will be to advise the association presidency and board of directors in their efforts to fulfill the purpose of the association.
The purpose of the Mormon Transhumanist Association is defined in its constitution. That purpose is to promote the Transhumanist Declaration and the Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation. In pursuit of that purpose, voting members elect directors to the board of directors, which is responsible for association strategy. The board of directors appoints officers, including the presidency, which is responsible for association tactics.
Unlike the association’s presidency and board of directors, the new board of advisors will have no formal legal authority beyond individual advisors’ rights as voting members. However, as former members of the board of directors, advisors will represent the association’s legacy of experience and influence, and the board of advisors will facilitate ongoing application of that value.
The association presidency, Carl Youngblood and Connie Packer, has asked Lincoln Cannon to organize the new board of advisors. Previously, Lincoln served as president of the association for its first ten years and as a director for its entire fifteen-year history. During that time, he has worked with all current and former members of the board of directors.
I am excited to formalize the relationship between past and present leadership. This board of advisors can expand the influence of the association. It can also lend experience and support to the current leadership. As a founder of the MTA and someone connected throughout the transhumanist community, Lincoln will be a great organizer for this group. (Vice President Connie Packer)
Lincoln has done more to articulate and promote the values of the Association than anyone I know. I’m grateful to have his help to organize and leverage the experience and talents of our previous leaders, and I’m confident that this will strengthen and balance our voices. (President Carl Youngblood)