Transhumanism

As the movie below tries to show, many modern conveniences which we take for granted today like elevators, escalators, cars, and airplanes would have been considered magical 100 years ago. They are magic. Humans can fly, communicate with another person on the opposite side of the globe, and steer giant mechanical monsters, and this sublime progression will only speed up in the years to come with genetics, robotics, information technologies, and nanotechnology (GRIN). Our bodies will be upgraded with animal parts, integrated further with the machines and the internet, and nanotech will allow us to alter the physical world like a programmer does with computer code. Bill Joy, a computer scientist in his own right and the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote an impassioned warning about the future of these technologies for Wired magazine in April 2000 titled, "Why the future doesn't need us." Joy fears that scientists today are tinkering with nature (be it human genes or nano machines) with Frankenstein-esque pride. Mythologies in the West warn man against interfering with God's authority--Prometheus, Frankenstein, even the hapless Adam and Eve. The videos below go into detail about what scientists have been up to in the recent years and gives a relatively balanced account on both perspectives of transhumanism.







I thought these videos played in well with our discussions on secondary orality. As humanity moves into the mysterious future, there will be a return to a sort of oral tradition which was lost long ago. We are on the precipice of a great consciousness shifter. What will happen when our brains become so entwined with the machines that they are no longer separable? What will happen when there is a breakthrough in the process of aging and immortality? There are some who claim that these technologies will be used for a burgeoning technological dictatorship which will be ruled by an intellectual elite, and transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil discuss a point in the future where technological innovation will come so quickly that it will self-replicate out of humanity's control. It fascinates me that logical thinking has progressed so far that it is now returning to a more intuitive realm. It is coming full circle.