Transhumanism – would you like to be enhanced and live forever?

When I lecture about the future of reproduction – I finish my talk introducing transhumanism. I always ask the audience if anyone knows what it means and so far the answer is always no.

I have wanted to write a blog about transhumanism for many months and having just finished Jeanette Wintersens book, Frankissstein, where transhumanism features heavily, I thought now is the time. And transhumanism is also featured in the BBC drama Years and Years when the parents are confronted with their daughter telling them she is trans, not transgender but transhuman. And of course we have Charlie Brooker’s amazing Black Mirror. “Brooker developed Black Mirror to highlight topics related to humanity’s relationship with technology, creating stories that feature “the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time if we’re clumsy.”

Transhumanism (abbreviated to H+ or h+) is a “philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology.” Another definition is “Transhuman, or trans-human, is the concept of an intermediary form between human and posthuman. In other words, a transhuman is a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans.”

I first learnt about transhumanism when I was on Sunday Morning Live sitting next to David Woods who is Chair of London Futurists, and has been organising events and projects on futurist and transhumanist topics for over a decade. His declared vision, for the next three years is to dramatically raise the calibre of public discussion about transhumanism and radical futurism.”

During the TV interview I thought Davids ideas were radical as we debated about the use of genome editing to enhance humans. Since then I have been following David and attended one of his London conferences.

The way I see it is that there are three stages of transhumanism:

Wellbeing and general health – Using technology to enable us to live longer and healthier is already here. Medicine does this and as time goes on we will use more technology to enhance our wellbeing. This is already being done for example with pace makers, hearing aids, and laser eye surgery (the only enhancement I have had done). As medicine develops, some of this tech will be embedded into us which has already been done for diabetes. And many of us already get health information from our wearables, such as watches. Eventually this tech will become more efficient that our flesh and blood, so how far will we go? As artificial limbs become more refined, will we end up like the six million dollar man or use nanobots to replace our red blood cells? An increase in the use of artificial hearts, eyes, ears and more? Eyes that can see in the dark? Smart pills for monitoring our health.

Longevity – Using technology to enable us to live longer. In 2014 the guys at Google set up Calico – “We’re tackling aging, one of life’s greatest mysteries. Calico is a research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan. We will use that knowledge to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. Executing on this mission will require an unprecedented level of interdisciplinary effort and a long-term focus for which funding is already in place.” Would you like to live to 100, 150 or beyond if you still had good health?

Losing our human form – why not totally ditch our flesh and blood and upload our brains into a computer so our consciousness lasts forever? But what will life be like without a body – or do we find another type of ‘body’ to exist in? Will we still have our senses and enjoy our environment?

Wrapped up with transhumanism is artificial intelligence (AI), cryogenetics and genetic engineering. Superintelligence asks the question “What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us?” The futurist talk about the singularity, when the computers become more intelligent than humans.

And what about genome editing – we could redesign the genes of an embryo before life is even begun. In 2019 I took part in an Oxford Union debate with the title – will genome editing undermine the nature of humanity? 

I also wanted to introduce you to some of the key players in transhumanism. At David Woods London Futurists meeting in June 2019 I met some amazing people – just a few are noted here: Ben Goertzel, Founder and CEO, SingularityNET and one of the team responsible for making Sophia – the worlds first social humanoid robot,  Max More, CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the company that will freeze your head, Natasha Vita-More, Executive Director, Humanity+ and one of the founders of transhumanism,  and Charlie Kam, media entrepreneur,  Director of Networking, California Transhumanist Party.

For our children, the digital age is normal and I suspect that they will embrace using tech to improve their bodies.

How far would you go to maintain your health and wellbeing? Will we not reproduce if we extend our lives? What will our childrens future look like?

Read More:

The coming transhuman era: Jason Sosa at TEDxGrandRapids

Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Artificial intelligence

The Singularity (film)

New book released by one of my friends, photographer David Vintiner ‘I Want To Believe‘ David and his team spent the last five years documenting Transhumanism in Europe, Russia and the United States based on a curiosity about the implications for the future of humanity.  David is crowdfunding to get the book out – please visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iwanttobelieve/i-want-to-believe-an-exploration-of-transhumanism?ref=creator_nav

Image credit – David Vintiner – Print Option 5: Kevin Warrick