Transhumanist technologies

Transhumanist technologies

Let me define “transhumanist technologies” as those technologies that permit or will permit, using Fukuyama’s words, “to liberate the human race from its biological constraints”.

There is a good probability that you are already using transhumanist technologies: if you are reading this page with eyeglasses, you are using a human enhancement technology aimed at overcoming your poor eyesight, or your “natural” loss of eyesight caused by aging. Same thing if you used Viagra or Cialis last night. Speaking about that, you have probably used contraceptives or condoms, which are also transhumanist technologies that permit liberating the human race from some of its biological constraints. The last two technologies have been, and still are, condemned by religious fundamentalists who believe (or better, wish to make us believe) that having a good life is a bad thing, but less and less people are listening to them.

If you are reading this page on the Internet, you are using another transhumanist technology - the Web is the quintessential transhumanist technology, which has given us the ability to access information and communicate with others regardless of physical proximity. You probably have another transhumanist gadget in your pocket - your cell phone gives you capabilities that your grandfather would have considered as magic. But also the primitive line phone that your grandfather used would have been considered, by his grandfather, as magic… And today the magic of multiuser online virtual worlds like Second Life permits meeting people online in synthetic realities with a high, and fast growing, degree of realism and immersion.

The point I am making is, of course, that we have always been using “transhumanist” technologies to enhance our capabilities. Actually, this can be taken as a definition of technology, and in this sense every technology is a transhumanist technology. Eyeglasses and condoms have already disappeared so deep in the texture of everyday life that we do not consider them as technology anymore: technology is, of course, whatever was invented after you were born.

So what transhumanist technologies are coming, and when?

One, that is already beginning to make headlines and reach the consumer market, is the ability to control computers by thought. Based on high performance interfaces able to sense specific features of the brain’s activity and translate them to a format understandable by software running on a computer, these gadgets already permit playing simple computer games by thought.

Posted by G.P. on 11/30 at 10:24 AM
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