In her most recent column, Catherine Heffner explores the ideas surrounding transhumanism, and just how far it will go.
For hundreds of years, we’ve sought to enhance the human life through technology. But these days, the direction of our invention is turning inwards – looking at how we can change our bodies, minds and the very future of humanity. But is there a point where technology can go too far?
Well, if you’ve ever dreamed of having superhuman strength, of being able to read minds or of having bionic limbs like Iron Man then you may well be a ‘transhumanist’. Transhumanism is an intellectual movement whose followers both desire and anticipate a future where human capabilities are enhanced by technology.
While admittedly, transhumanism is somewhat of a fringe science, it is gathering a lot of popular support and has influences from some very powerful people. For instance, Ray Kurzweil; author and director of engineering at Google, is one of the most prominent advocates for the movement. In his book The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil predicts and illustrates his concept of ‘The Singularity’ – a point in the near future at which he believes technological advances will allow for the creation of super-human intelligence. Think microchips, brain implants and synthetic neocortex extenders.
Kurzweil has even founded The Singularity University, whose graduate programs in science and technology centre on this theory. Corporate executives can also pay thousands of dollars for a few days of workshop-style teaching with some of the most influential scientists and technologists in the world. The university is currently backed by internationally recognised organisations such as Google, Nokia and NASA.
If Kurzweil’s estimations are correct, we will have reached the ‘Singularity’ by the year 2045. Kurzweil believes that technologies and paradigm shifts multiply over time at an exponential rate – starting with a slow increase, and leading to what he describes as “explosive and transformative” changes in the future.
This seems to be confirmed by the media around us, which constantly reports truly mind-blowing advances in science. For instance, the EU has just committed millions of euros to the development of wearable robotic exoskeletons for factory employees, in the hope of reducing work related injuries. In 2012, a team of scientists at Johns Hopkins University were able to replace a woman’s ear that she had lost to cancer by reconstructing a new ear from her rib cartilage. This new ear was grown in her forearm for several months before being grafted onto her head.
Earlier this year, scientists created a kind of micro-particle which, when injected, allows for sufficient oxygenation of the body that breathing is no longer required for life. The scope for the expansion of our technologies seems to be limitless.
As you’d expect, transhumanism has caused a great deal of controversy. People are often uncomfortable with the idea of the post-human world for moral, ethical or religious reasons, and as such, the movement has provoked a lot of discussion. Often, there are no simple answers as to whether the technologies transhumanism supports are ethical or not. Especially when finance comes into the equation. Already, the wealthy seem to have an upper hand in the use of these technologies. People are spending tens of thousands of dollars to have their body preserved through cryonics, in the hope that one day, they will be resuscitated by a future generation.
New parents can now pay for the storage of their child’s umbilical cord blood which can be used a source of stem cells should the child develop a disease later in life. Artificial organs, bionic limbs and other new therapies and prosthetics are often still only available to the wealthy. Many people have argued against this divide. Others protest that it would be more ethically unacceptable to prevent the use of these technologies until society has created a fairer arrangement.
Even aside from finance, the ethical issues surrounding certain practices are complicated. Particularly practices involved with the prevention of ageing. In the popular Channel 4 documentary “How to Build a Bionic Man”, the bioethicist George Annas notes: “We’re a great death denying species. Even though the death rate is 100%, it’s very difficult to find someone who accepts that. I mean in the last 150 years, the average life expectancy has increased by 7 hours every day. It’s remarkable it continues to do that. Is that good? It’s horrific to say no to that question but the answer is no, its not good – there’s a limit.”
This is a long-existing debate. Although written more than half a century ago, I found C.S. Lewis’s writing on ‘The Abolition of Man’ particularly sobering; “The final stage has come”, he reasons, “when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of nature to surrender to Man.” Take this as an extreme view, but it certainly doesn’t seem far-fetched. We’re at a stage in technological advancements where the lines between the natural and the man-made are becoming more and more blurred.
Talk to any person of an older generation and quickly you realise how this one is different. We’ve seen the progression of mobile phones, the creation of the Internet, the sequencing of the human genome, and many other incredible discoveries and inventions. We’re part of the first generation to have grown up with these incredible technologies – where nobody seems quite sure how to use them or whether they should even be used in the first place. In the words of Eric Schmidt; “The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand; the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” So what then do we want to say when years down the line, we’re talking to the younger generations? Will we be even able to call them human? It may just be that by then, in a transhumanist’s dream world, our experiment in anarchy will have succeeding in leaving nature to surrender to man.
Catherine Heffner, Features Columnist
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