José Luis Cordeiro Mateo (born 1 April 1962) is a Venezuelan-Spanish engineer, economist,

futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...

, and

transhumanist Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition. Transhuma ...

, who has worked on areas including

economic development In the economics study of the public sector, economic and social development is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region, local community, or an individual are improved according to targeted goals a ...

international relations International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the Scientific method, scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities betwe ...

, Latin America, the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money supply, often ...

, comparison of constitutions, energy trends,

cryonics Cryonics (from el, κρύος ''kryos'' meaning 'cold') is the low-temperature freezing (usually at ) and storage of human remains, with the speculative hope that resurrection may be possible in the future. Cryonics is regarded with skepticis ...

, and

life extension Life extension is the concept of extending the human lifespan, either modestly through improvements in medicine or dramatically by increasing the maximum lifespan beyond its generally-settled limit of 125 years. Several researchers in the area ...

. Books he has written include ''The Great Taboo'', ''Constitutions Around the World: A Comparative View from Latin America'', and (in Spanish) ''El Desafio Latinoamericano'' ("The Latin American challenge"), and ''La Muerte de la Muerte'' ("The death of death").

Biography

Cordeiro was born in Caracas, Venezuela, from Spanish parents who emigrated from Madrid during the

Franco Franco may refer to: Name * Franco (name) * Francisco Franco (1892–1975), Spanish general and dictator of Spain from 1939 to 1975 * Franco Luambo (1938–1989), Congolese musician, the "Grand Maître" Prefix * Franco, a prefix used when ...

dictatorship. Cordeiro obtained Bachelor of Science (BSc) and Master of Science (MSc) degrees in mechanical engineering at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

(MIT), Cambridge, USA. He later studied international economics and comparative politics at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

in Washington, DC, USA, and obtained a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, France, majoring in finance and globalization. He started his doctoral degree at MIT, continued these studies in Tokyo, Japan, and in due course received his PhD at Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB) in Caracas, Venezuela. After graduating, Cordeiro worked as a petroleum exploration engineer for

Schlumberger Schlumberger Limited (), doing business as SLB, is an oilfield services company. Schlumberger has four principal executive offices located in Paris, Houston, London, and The Hague. Schlumberger is the world's largest offshore drilling comp ...

. He next served as an adviser for many major oil companies, including BP,

ChevronTexaco Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California (shortened to Socal or CalSo), it is headquartered in San ...

ExxonMobil ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November ...

PDVSA Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA, ) (English: Petroleum of Venezuela) is the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company. It has activities in exploration, production, refining and exporting oil as well as exploration and production ...

Pemex Pemex (a portmanteau of Petróleos Mexicanos, which translates to ''Mexican Petroleum'' in English; ) is the Mexican state-owned petroleum company managed and operated by the Mexican government. It was formed in 1938 by nationalization and expr ...

, Petrobras,

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

, and Total. Later, in Paris, he consulted for

Booz Allen Hamilton Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation (informally Booz Allen) is the parent of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., an American management and information technology consulting firm, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in Greater Washington, D.C., wit ...

as a specialist in strategy, restructuring, and finance. Cordeiro has been an advocate of sound monetary policy and dollarization in Eastern Europe and Latin America. His 1999 book ''La Segunda Muerte de Sucre'' provided academic backing for the change from the

sucre Sucre () is the capital of Bolivia, the capital of the Chuquisaca Department and the 6th most populated city in Bolivia. Located in the south-central part of the country, Sucre lies at an elevation of . This relatively high altitude gives the ...

to the dollar as the currency in Ecuador, where he is regarded as one of the thought leaders of this transformation. Cordeiro is an international fellow of the

World Academy of Art and Science The World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), founded in 1960, is an international non-governmental scientific organization and global network of more than 800 scientists, artists, and scholars in more than 90 countries. It serves as a forum for s ...

(WAAS), executive director of the

Ibero-American Futurists Network Ibero-America ( es, Iberoamérica, pt, Ibero-América) or Iberian America is a region in the Americas comprising countries or territories where Spanish or Portuguese are predominant languages (usually former territories of Portugal or Spain). P ...

, Venezuela Node Chair of The Millennium Project, vice chair of

Humanity Plus Humanity+ (also Humanity Plus; formerly the World Transhumanist Association) is a non-profit international educational organization that advocates the ethical use of technologies and evidence-based science to improve the human condition. This c ...

, and former director of the

Club of Rome The Club of Rome is a nonprofit, informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders whose goal is a critical discussion of pressing global issues. The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy. It consists ...

(Venezuela Chapter), the

World Transhumanist Association Humanity+ (also Humanity Plus; formerly the World Transhumanist Association) is a non-profit international educational organization that advocates the ethical use of technologies and evidence-based science to improve the human condition. This cond ...

, and the Extropy Institute. He has also been invited faculty at institutions such as the

Institute of Developing Economies Institute of Developing Economies (IDE; アジア経済研究所) is a semi-governmental research institute under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the largest institute on social science in Japan. Current status is a body of the Ja ...

IDE – JETRO in Tokyo, Japan, the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico,

Singularity University Singularity Education Group (using the public names Singularity Group, Singularity University or SingularityU) is an American company that offers executive educational programs, a business incubator, and business consultancy services. Although ...

NASA Ames The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labora ...

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Count ...

, California, the

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT; russian: Московский Физико-Технический институт, also known as PhysTech), is a public university, public research university located in Moscow Oblast, Russia. I ...

(MIPT), and the

Higher School of Economics HSE University (russian: link=no, «Высшая школа экономики», ВШЭ), officially the National Research University Higher School of Economics (russian: link=no, Национальный исследовательский ун ...

in Russia. Cordeiro has written a fortnightly opinion column in El Universal, the largest Venezuelan general newspaper, since 1996. In 2008, Cordeiro conducted the last public interview with science fiction writer

Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Spac ...

, in Clarke's home in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

. He is a lifetime member of the

Sigma Xi Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is a highly prestigious, non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a small group of graduate students in 1886 ...

Tau Beta Pi The Tau Beta Pi Association (commonly Tau Beta Pi, , or TBP) is the oldest engineering honor society and the second oldest collegiate honor society in the United States. It honors engineering students in American universities who have shown a ...

, and

Beta Gamma Sigma Beta Gamma Sigma () is the International Business Honor Society. Founded in 1913 at the University of Wisconsin, University of Illinois and the University of California, it has over 980,000 members, selected from more than 600 collegiate chapters i ...

honor societies. In the 2019 European Parliament election in Spain, Cordeiro ran for

MEP MEP may refer to: Organisations and politics * Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, a political party in Sri Lanka * Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (1956), a former political alliance in Sri Lanka * Maison européenne de la photographie, a photography centre ...

as the candidate for the Movimiento Independiente Euro Latino, promoting the representation of Latin Americans in Spain and Europe and promoting science and research to build better societies.

Philosophy

Cordeiro has been described as "a hopeless optimist always bursting with energy". He advises audiences to "forget flying cars and robot butlers ... the future will be a far more interesting place". He views nano, bio, info, and cogno (NBIC) as being the four main technologies that "are pushing mankind into the post-human age", and he predicts that "in the future we will be upgrading our brains every few years in the manner that we currently update our computer hardware". In 2009, Cordeiro spoke at the European Futurists Conference in Lucerne about the concept of 'Singularity': "a not-too-distant moment when artificial intelligence overtakes the capabilities of the human mind – the point when we are going to merge with machines". As a teaching fellow of the

, he added that "the purpose of Singularity University is to prepare humankind for this transformation". Cordeiro coined the term 'Energularity' to refer to "the biggest change in the largest industry on our planet ... the Energy industry’s shift from fossil fuels to solar, wind, geothermal, or fusion". He also coined the term "Benesuela" as a contrast to "Venezuela" in reference to the educational situation in that country. In a set of forecasts about Latin America in 2030, Cordeiro and the

Millennium Project A millennium (plural millennia or millenniums) is a period of one thousand years, sometimes called a kiloannum (ka), or kiloyear (ky). Normally, the word is used specifically for periods of a thousand years that begin at the starting point (ini ...

highlighted two extreme scenarios: "God is Latin American" and "Disintegration in Hell". The

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

has quoted Cordeiro as saying "The constitutional history of Latin America is the most convulsive in the world. Constitutions seem to have become like shirts, not even suits, which rulers put on and take off at their whim." In line with forecasts by

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, inventor, and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and ...

that the Singularity will occur by 2045, Cordeiro predicts that "death will be optional by 2045". This will take place "thanks to exponential advances in artificial intelligence, tissue regeneration, stem cell treatments, organ printing, cryopreservation, and genetic or immunological therapies that will solve the problem of the aging of the human body".

Books

''El Desafio Latinoamericano''
(1996)
Gran Tabu Venezolano: la desestatizacion y democratizacion del petroleo''
(1998)
Great Taboo''
(1998)
''Benesuela vs. Venezuela: el combate educativo del siglo''
(1998)
''La Segunda Muerte de Bolivar... y el Renacer de Venezuela''
(1998)
''La Segunda Muerte de Sucre... y el Renacer del Ecuador''
(1999)
''Pesos o dolares?''
(2000)
''El desafio latinoamericano y sus cinco grandes retos''
(2007)
''Constitutions Around the World: A Comparative View from Latin America''
(2009)
''Telephones and Economic Development: A Worldwide Long-Term''
(2010)
''Latinoamérica 2030: Estudio Delphi y Escenarios''
(2014)
''La Muerte de la Muerte: La posibilidad científica de la inmortalidad física y su defensa moral''
(2018)

References

External links

Official website

Official blog

The Millennium Project
Videos * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cordeiro, Jose Luis 1962 births People from Caracas Venezuelan expatriates in Spain MIT School of Engineering alumni INSEAD alumni Futurologists Spanish transhumanists Venezuelan transhumanists Singularitarians Life extensionists Living people