What is a human being? An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree.

December 19, 2008 3:27 PM

H+ Magazine is an online quarterly publication focusing on transhumanism, a product of the futurist movement that supports science and technology to enhance the mental and physical capacities of the human being. Sometimes referred to as posthumanism, Francis Fukuyama calls it one of the world's most dangerous ideas. If you feel like you're lagging behind, George Dvorsky is kind enough to inform us ~>H's of the must-know transhumanist terms for today's intelligentsia.

Previously, are you afraid of death?

posted by ageispolis (107 comments total)

Shouldn't that be H++ ?
posted by mikelieman at 3:28 PM on December 19, 2008 [3 favorites]

It's enough work just being human. No thanks.
posted by jonmc at 3:32 PM on December 19, 2008

tl;dr

Just cut to the chase: How scared am I supposed to be?
posted by Joe Beese at 3:49 PM on December 19, 2008

I'm happy being human. The fear of improvements clashing, or failing, scare me. My own memory fails me enough, without the additional worry of computer failures. But then I could forget I was worried in the first place. Hmm ...
posted by filthy light thief at 3:52 PM on December 19, 2008

You know, there seems to be something decidedly creepy about transhumanism. Being a normal human being, one who communicates with words and falls in love and makes things with his hands and grubs around in the dirt and stuff, seems plenty fulfilling and human to me.

I don't want to use science to artificially increase my intelligence, I don't want to warp spacetime, and I think colonizing space would be miserable, dehumanizing, and a huge waste of time and energy. I don't want everything to be taken over by machines I couldn't ever understand, and I want to make things with my hands.

Transhumanists piss me off, and technocrats make me want to bash in their heads with a blunt object.
posted by dunkadunc at 3:52 PM on December 19, 2008 [6 favorites]

I for one welcome . . .

Or, on second though, really, I don't.
posted by washburn at 3:54 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

PDF Magazines are the future!
posted by Artw at 3:58 PM on December 19, 2008 [5 favorites]

As a transhumanist, I have to say that I love Fukuyama's article. He does raise the biggest moral argument against transhumanism, and about the only one that I think holds much water. What do you do about those who are left behind?

Transhumanism is a means to an end. The end is posthumanism. What that will be, I have no clue... I'm just interested in the trip, personally. But, I do imagine it will be damn-near godhood. The one thing I've never heard from any transhumanist was that we should assimilate the unwilling... personal choice and autonomy seem deeply ingrained in most of the movement.

Transhumanism will cause strife, I'm sure. Just as the wide gap between advanced countries where magic happens daily and less-advanced countries who live essentially as we did a thousand years ago causes strife today.

However, to achieve posthuman status, transhumans will have to solve truly huge problems. In their solutions will be the solutions to human problems of resource scarcity.

There will be great inequality as resources are consumed creating transhuman artifacts. And then, at some point, it will tip back the other way. Somebody will work out cold fusion, or transmutation, or some magic I can't imagine. Or, cyborg implants and gene therapy will drop in cost and risk to the level of a cellphone. Economies of scale.

At some point, everybody will be able to choose. As for those who choose not to... if I practice tennis, and you do not, did I cheat when I beat you?
posted by Netzapper at 4:01 PM on December 19, 2008 [5 favorites]

Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project.

Fukuyama's genetic/biological theory of personhood makes me facepalm.

I don't want to use science to artificially increase my intelligence

You'd best get off Metafilter then, you might learn something. See, the thing is, you already are using science and technology to increase your intelligence in various ways. I use a calculator to increase my ability to do arithmetic. I use a hard drive or NVRAM to augment my memory. Such devices or abilities could be built in to the brain through implants or genetic engineering, and they'd be easier to use and more accessible, but it's still the same thing.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:13 PM on December 19, 2008 [11 favorites]

Transhumanism as a movement seems like little more than an excuse to write dry science fiction.

We have been post-Homo-sapiens around the time we learned how to make and use fire, or maybe when we started forming cities. We have been creating technology and social order that takes us beyond our basic physical capabilities since before we started recording history (another post-sapien activity).

We don't need a movement to make us transhuman, most of us are working hard at it every day. When you write down a shopping list, you are augmenting your basic memory capability. When you raise money to cure disease in Africa, you are working against the naked human immune system. When you blog, you augmenting your basic communication ability.

The biological and post-biological stuff is a drop in the bucket. We are all transhumans.
posted by b1tr0t at 4:16 PM on December 19, 2008 [18 favorites]

When you use an iPhone to wiki trivia in the pub...
posted by Artw at 4:16 PM on December 19, 2008

When you use your G1 to find the 'Chevy's' at the mall...
posted by The Power Nap at 4:35 PM on December 19, 2008

At some point, everybody will be able to choose. As for those who choose not to... if I practice tennis, and you do not, did I cheat when I beat you?

Your analogy assumes that I would ever want to play tennis with you in the first place.

I think I'm going to go and enjoy being outside for a bit.
posted by dunkadunc at 4:35 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

When the oil runs out, it will be grimly amusing to remember that this was what some people were concerned about.
posted by Joe Beese at 4:49 PM on December 19, 2008 [11 favorites]

Transhumanists are amusing idiots, nothing more. You can see this by the way they so confidently use the future tense, as if steady exponential upward progress were an incontrovertible assumption. They're the Communists of the twenty-first century. No reason to be scared of them unless they start killing you for your own good, since their dream is just a rosy and insubstantial fantasy.
posted by nasreddin at 5:02 PM on December 19, 2008 [7 favorites]

I wear contact lenses, have had my jaw surgically altered to correct an underbite (and have had braces to straighten my teeth. Wouldn't that make me posthuman?
posted by KokuRyu at 5:03 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

I wasn't all that interested until I heard that Fukuyama didn't like it.
posted by DU at 5:13 PM on December 19, 2008 [4 favorites]

Actually, come to think of it, the parallels between Transhumanism ca. 1990-2008 and Marxism 1880-1930 are pretty striking. Confident talk about "undeniable" facts; the obsession with inventing historical laws and postulating a firm path for future history; the casual dismissal of previous systems of thought as obsolete; the development of an increasingly arcane vocabulary with an increasingly tenuous connection to lived experience; fantasies of warping time and space on a fundamental level (see Aleksey Gastev [self-link] for an example of how this played out in Marxist thinking); ideological strategies designed to mark off certain populations as obsolete or reactionary; the ideological reification of "science." Let's hope the Transhumanists never have their 1917.
posted by nasreddin at 5:13 PM on December 19, 2008 [25 favorites]

You know, there seems to be something decidedly creepy about transhumanism. Being a normal human being, one who communicates with words and falls in love and makes things with his hands and grubs around in the dirt and stuff, seems plenty fulfilling and human to me.

You're right, the world "as-is" is a nearly ideal paradise and nothing should change. The only thing better than the world today was the world in biblical times, with the starvation and the bashing of heads and whatnot, before any of this science and technology "dehumanized" everyone.

So I'm guessing you're a Western white male? I.e., someone who can quietly benefit from the last 2000 years of progress while still bashing it?

Lest you accusing me of missing your point, grubbing around in the dirt and stuff isn't very fulfilling to me, and if that makes me creepy then fine. Maybe you should just leave us alone and let us do our thing, and we can do likewise.
posted by Xezlec at 5:13 PM on December 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

^ No. Former subhuman.
posted by autodidact at 5:14 PM on December 19, 2008

If leaving people behind is the main argument against transhumanism, I don't think it will stop anyone. We don't seem to care much about those left behind from much more basic things like health care, food, and clean water.
posted by specialfriend at 5:15 PM on December 19, 2008 [9 favorites]

if I practice tennis, and you do not, did I cheat when I beat you?

When you force people to "play tennis" on your terms, did they get the personal choice and autonomy you otherwise promised them?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:31 PM on December 19, 2008 [6 favorites]

specialfriend, I think the real worry here is that we, the current elite will be among those left behind.

That said, I didn't put much creedence in Transhumanism until Fukuyama wrote his diatribe. If that academic moron is against Transhumanism, there has to be something to the movement after all.
posted by happyroach at 5:31 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

These quotes (from the "must-know" link) speak volumes:

Accelerating Change: That the pace of technological development is accelerating is now undeniable. The steady onslaught of Moore's Law and its eerie regularity is the most profound example. As thinkers like Ray Kurzweil and others have shown, the onslaught of accelerating change throws commonly held time-frames out the window. And that this rate of change is exponential implies radical social disruption around the mid-point of the 21st Century.

Note the use of the word "undeniable." Also note how the "thinkers" referenced are themselves Transhumanists; the same kind of circular self-reinforcing feedback loop developed in Marxist theory as well. If you can handwave around the initial assumptions, then you can build an elaborate theoretical edifice and an infinitely extended ideological discourse around it.

Radical Luddism: Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski may have been the first of a new breed of radical anti-technology terrorists. In his manifesto, titled Industrial Society and Its Future, he argued that his actions were a necessary (although extreme) ruse by which to attract attention to what he believed were the dangers of modern technology. Given the extreme and disruptive potential for biotechnology, AI, nanotechnology and cybernetics, it is safe to assume that a fringe segment of society will take it upon themselves to prevent their development by any means necessary.

Exactly these sorts of characterizations were applied to "counterrevolutionaries" and "bourgeois reactionaries" in revolutionary Russia. The existence of these groups (which may be real or imagined) enables the deployment of a vast repressive apparatus, and the description of them as a "fringe" conceals the violence that anchors the system. If Transhumanists ever gain power, this is what it will look like.
posted by nasreddin at 5:32 PM on December 19, 2008 [7 favorites]

When you use an iPhone to wiki trivia in the pub...
posted by Artw at 4:16 PM on December 19 [+] [!]


When you use your G1 to find the 'Chevy's' at the mall...
posted by The Power Nap at 4:35 PM on December 19 [+] [!]

When you reach sexual climax by browsing thumbnailed videos of...

Uh...never mind
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:37 PM on December 19, 2008

What b1tr0t said. Although Accelerando was pretty interesting.

Lest you accusing me of missing your point, grubbing around in the dirt and stuff isn't very fulfilling to me, and if that makes me creepy then fine. Maybe you should just leave us alone and let us do our thing, and we can do likewise.

Dude, it's like you're already gone.
posted by sneebler at 5:39 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

When you force people to "play tennis" on your terms, did they get the personal choice and autonomy you otherwise promised them?

wow. That was almost my response.

why are so many transhumanists computer engineers and trekkies, anyway?
posted by dunkadunc at 5:39 PM on December 19, 2008

Such devices or abilities could be built in to the brain through implants or genetic engineering, and they'd be easier to use and more accessible, but it's still the same thing.

Seems to me that there's a bit of difference between augmenting your body to live a reasonably normal and comfortable lifespan (as defined by, say, wearing a pair of glasses) and augmenting your body to live forever, which is more along the mission statement of transhumanism — even granting that, say, not everyone in the world with bad eyesight will get to wear corrective lenses.

At some point, the technology is being used to go beyond assisting one's life, towards artificially shortening another's. There's a tipping point where subjugating "subhumans" would be the logical necessity of living in an environment with limited resources, to maintain a small class of "transhumans".

We're already seeing this to some degree, with the United States using a quarter of the world's natural resources, while representing as a small fraction of the world's population. The artificial maintenance of this lifestyle has required keeping undeveloped countries in a state of war, famine and general strife. Developed nations in general do not pay the true cost for their developed condition.

One can imagine where this goes with corporations and the handful of billionaires that own them, using their financial and political capital to extend their lives indefinitely, but William Gibson wrote about all of this more than twenty years ago.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:52 PM on December 19, 2008 [8 favorites]

why are so many transhumanists computer engineers and trekkies, anyway?

Why are so many physically active people athletes? Why do so many liberals watch the Daily Show?
posted by Xezlec at 5:53 PM on December 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

nasreddin: good point. the transhumanists also tend to igore that except for a couple limited areas, it's arguable that technological change is actually slowing down. Sure computer hardware is getting better and smaller, and we're finally, almost at the point of getting decent robotics. On the other hand, I'm using a computer interface of a type that's nearly over 30 years old, and the programs I'm using, while greatly expanded in size and packed with seldom-used extra elements, are really not all that more powerful or efficient then the ones I used 20 years ago. Outside of computers it's even worse: the basic design for my car is how old? A century? When was the last major revolution in transportation? And in communication, is the change from phones to computers really greater than that from mail to phones?

If you compare 1890 with 1950, and 1950 with 2010, I think it's very arguable that far more drastic changes occured in the first half o the period, not the second. If the rate of technological change is a sine curve, we may already be at the point where the curve is levelling out.
posted by happyroach at 5:55 PM on December 19, 2008

What b1tr0t said. Although Accelerando was pretty interesting.

Yeah, but Accelerando was a novel involving transhumanists, not a manifesto. I doubt cstross would consider himself a transhumanist. But he is definitely a skilled scifi novelist.
posted by b1tr0t at 6:06 PM on December 19, 2008

Look, if you can get me 12.1 megapixel cameras for eyes (15x zoom) and cell/wifi antenna implant, I'm yours.


Until it's time to upgrade.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:14 PM on December 19, 2008

Transhumanism was attractive when I was a impressionable and unattractive 16-year old with a technology fetish. Not so much now that I've gotten laid.

But this thread is worth it just for the link to Aleksei Gastev. I just sent some Gastev poems to friends, labeled as "some poetry for the holidays". I mean, this just warms my heart, I mean, arterial pump:

Gears - at superspeed.
Brain machines - high load.
Cinema eyes - fix.
Electric nerves - to work.
Arterial pumps, activate.

posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:14 PM on December 19, 2008

When the oil runs out, it will be grimly amusing to remember that this was what some people were concerned about.

Yeah, that's what's more likely.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 6:20 PM on December 19, 2008

JZ-- I like this one too:

Order 09

Open the battle.
With hands and breast.
Halt.
Hypnosis battle.
Maneuver backwards.
Mobilize along four highways.
Battle of syllogisms.
Pressure gauge readings.
Burn them with y-rays.
Oxygenate the rear.
Nitrogenate the enemy.
Brainwash.
Pause.
Throw off orientation in space.
Turn on the sense of time.
Drop darkness on the crowds.
A dam of people under a dam of people.
Insane women, give birth.
Give birth immediately, at once.

posted by nasreddin at 6:40 PM on December 19, 2008 [5 favorites]

Your analogy assumes that I would ever want to play tennis with you in the first place.

Transhumanists are amusing idiots, nothing more.

Transhumanism was attractive when I was a impressionable and unattractive 16-year old with a technology fetish. Not so much now that I've gotten laid.

Jesus, I paid $5 for this?
posted by Xezlec at 6:50 PM on December 19, 2008 [3 favorites]

Ken MacLeod's Fall revolution series is worth reading for a bit of a critique of the whole Transhuman/Libertarian axis (and as some pretty good SF as well).
posted by Artw at 6:50 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Jesus, I paid $5 for this?

What were you expecting? OMG KURZWEIL FAP FAP FAP?
posted by nasreddin at 6:58 PM on December 19, 2008 [7 favorites]

nasreddin: Where are you getting these? I've only found scattered Gastev poetry, with varying quality of translation, around the web.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:05 PM on December 19, 2008

nasreddin: Where are you getting these? I've only found scattered Gastev poetry, with varying quality of translation, around the web.

A few friends and I put out a literary magazine, and I'm contributing a translation of A Package of Orders to our next issue. I used this link as the original.
posted by nasreddin at 7:08 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Jesus, I paid $5 for this?

Something I'm sure we've all said to ourselves, at least once.
posted by AdamCSnider at 7:11 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

That's an interesting comparison, nasreddin, but I think nearly all social movements try to define themselves by stating there are "indisputable facts" about society which they recognize, as well as the belief that "we" are the ones moving forward while everyone else is stuck back in the old paradigm. That's not exclusively in the realm of Marxists.

Re: transhumanism - I can appreciate the fact that we already do use technology to make life easier and/or more enjoyable, but it's not a given that humanity is going to march steadily onward until we are all floating, conscious globes of pure energy zinging through space. And I don't think the disparity that Fukuyama talks about is exclusive to Transhumanist thought. About 20% of humanity lacks access to clean drinking water, let alone access to a cryogenic lab. If Fukuyama wants to address Transhumanism as "dangerous" to world equality, I'd say there are more immediate threats to equality than this.

*uploads to mothership*
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:32 PM on December 19, 2008 [3 favorites]

I'll avoid bashing the trans/posthumanist omg singularity stuff outright, but to me it all seems to be a rejection of the fact that human beings are in fact animals just like everything else and that our bodies will fall apart and we will all die one day. So some people like to dream of a time when we are augmented by technology to the point where we will live forever completely separate from the natural world. Believe what you want, but to a lot of people it's intellectually laughable and kind of frightening. No one is going to escape nature.
posted by palidor at 7:33 PM on December 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

A few friends and I put out a literary magazine

Ahhhh, okay. I was wondering....
posted by Ryvar at 7:35 PM on December 19, 2008

Every transhumanist vision of the future I've seen repels me for pretty much the same reasons as dunkadunc, but my hippyish quasi-nature mystic tendencies aren't my only reason for being anti-transhumanist. (I believe transhumanists usually dub people like me "bioconservatives.") I'm not going to be a supporter of any movement that promises to greatly increase hierarchy and inequality- something that I think would inevitably result from transhumanist dreams coming to pass. Genetic engineering and cybernetic enhancements would not be things that could be cheaply bought. How much greater would the advantages of the wealthy and powerful be, if they could literally buy greater intelligence and longer life for themselves? To be sure, this happens already to an extent (the rich obviously have access to better education and medical care, etc.) but the advances transhumanists imagine would represent one more way the bar would be raised, and a far more dramatic one than what has existed before. Genetic engineering of the sort many transhumanists picture, in particular, seems very likely to bring about the existence of an entrenched hereditary elite. In a society where the wealthy can make their children inherently smarter and longer-lived, social mobility seems likely to fall to a level somewhere below that of medieval feudalism.
And I don't really see any reason to believe that these post-human elites would be any more wise or moral than our current ones. (They would, however, certainly be much harder to dislodge.) A higher IQ does not equal a better person, or even really a smarter one in many ways that matter. I mean, Paul Wolfowitz and Antonin Scalia are very smart, in the "IQ" sense.

And on that note, I'm quite sure it wouldn't be the current elite that would be left behind in a transhumanist future. I have no doubt that the businessmen and politicians of the world today would jump at the opportunity to live longer and make their children smarter. I think I used this example before, but life extension starts to seem like a much less appealing prospect when you picture John Roberts on the Supreme Court for as long as there's a Supreme Court.

All this being the case, I don't think it's coincidental that a great many transhumanists seem to be Objectivist libertarians. (The thought of literal Randroids is pretty much all it takes to put me into the anti-transhumanist camp.) Fortunately, (at least from my perspective) I have serious doubts that most of what transhumanists imagine is even possible, so all of this is very likely a moot point. At any rate, I hope it is.

(And I wish I could favorite nasreddin's posts here more than once- I've noticed the same similarities between transhumanists and Marxists, and he articulated them much better than I could. I kind of see Ray Kurzweil as an Alexei Gastev for the 21st century- I wonder what Gastev would have thought of Kurzweil's "Cybernetic Poet".)
posted by a louis wain cat at 7:55 PM on December 19, 2008 [6 favorites]

to me it all seems to be a rejection of the fact that human beings are in fact animals just like everything else and that our bodies will fall apart and we will all die one day.

In an existence devoid of an afterlife, all actions are by definition futile - we fade into consciousness from childhood, we perform some actions, and we hit the lights on our way out. Our inability to directly share the experiences or emotions of other individuals results in a lot of war, torture, and similar horrors along the way; but even worse it gives us every reason to expect that when we go we take the entire universe with us (at least from our own perspectives).

Living a rich, full life spent making millions of other people happy and raising a loving family gets you to exactly the same place as dying of an intentional heroin overdose tonight: oblivion.

In this light, everything is as Solomon observed: utterly meaningless.

Under the circumstances, can you really blame people for clutching at straws? As far as I can tell, there isn't even anything else worth doing.

No one is going to escape nature.

That's one hell of a prediction. Entropy is the one physical law we'll never bend or manipulate or circumvent? Really? I couldn't make that statement with any degree of comfort. I wouldn't try to predict the existential outlook of a person in 2058 - and ten million years from now what passes for mankind might have entirely different notions as to the feasibility of creating whole new universes bereft of certain fundamental principles.
posted by Ryvar at 8:01 PM on December 19, 2008 [4 favorites]

Under the circumstances, can you really blame people for clutching at straws? As far as I can tell, there isn't even anything else worth doing.

I'm not sure becoming an everlasting cyberbot and then existing until the heat death of the universe really get's you anywhere else though.
posted by Artw at 8:10 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

I don't think it's coincidental that a great many transhumanists seem to be Objectivist libertarians.

That's pretty counter to my own experience - myself and most of my friends would probably qualify as transhumanists for the purposes of Metafilter chatting, and every single person I care for openly mocks Objectivism as folderol for highschoolers.

That said, to the minor degree to which I can bear even glancing at articles about capital-T Transhumanism, every spokesperson I've seen for it appears to be a consummate idiot.
posted by Ryvar at 8:12 PM on December 19, 2008

Artw: I'd counter that if you've been around for that long and haven't solved heat death, then you deserve whatever you get.

Less flippantly - I think the point is that right now the human race is sort of caught up in the zeitgeist equivalent to an adolescent existential crisis, and maybe the smart money is on trying to stick around long enough to see how a species with a few thousand more years experience defying physics feels about the meaning of life.
posted by Ryvar at 8:16 PM on December 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

From the " must know" llink above:

At the dawn of European humanism, Florentines believed that reading Dante while ignoring science was ridiculous. Similarly, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo both recognized the great importance of understanding science, technology and engineering.

Despite these trail-blazers, not much has changed since then; a startling number of so-called 'intellectuals' remain grossly ignorant of pending technologies and the revealing sciences (the postmodernists immediately come to mind). Today's intelligentsia, in order to qualify for such a designation, must have the requisite vocabulary with which to address valid social concerns and effectively assess the future.

OK, you've got a point there in your first paragraph. Plenty of liberal arts types have as much disdain for science, tech and engineering as 18th century English lords had for trade and commerce.

But in your second paragraph, you try to pull a fast one. You're trying to equate "pending technologies and the revealing sciences" with what you call a "requisite vocabulary." That "vocabulary" is a Trojan horse for your own ideological beliefs, the validity of which you haven't successfully argued.

This is a bit like me arguing (to borrow from nasreddin, upthread) "Today's intellectuals don't focus enough on politics. Here is a whole bunch of vocabulary words so that you can be, like, relevant and stuff.

*bourgeoisie
*proletariat
*capitalism
*OUR LEADER IS BOB AVAKIAN! OUR IDEOLOGY IS MARXISM-LENINISM! OUR PARTY IS THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY!"

You see what I mean?
posted by jason's_planet at 8:17 PM on December 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

a louis wain cat - I'm not sure how your objection wouldn't apply to every technology. Every technology is expensive at first, and only rich people can get it. 100 years ago, that was true for cars, and 30 years ago, that was true for computers. And look where we are now.

It is true that there are some people that can't afford cars or computers now, but the basic functionality of both is getting cheaper and cheaper to achieve.

In my own opinion, the march of technology will change how humans relate to each other and their environment, but it's not going to be the specific changes imagined by transhumanists. No one is going to know how it's going to play out; even the inventors and innovators will not understand the specific ways in which their work will change society.
posted by Jpfed at 8:22 PM on December 19, 2008

I generally like this sort of thing, but Accelerando gave me a headache, and not in a good way.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:26 PM on December 19, 2008

Augmented Reality: AR describes the fusion of the real world with the virtual. By using eyetaps, eartaps and implants, individuals will be able to filter unwanted information from their sensory fields (such as annoying advertising and sounds). Alternately, users will have new information virtually inserted into their environment, including descriptions of landmarks, maps, or even an alert notification that a familiar person is approaching. Imagine the gaming possibilities...

A couple of nights back, I had to share a subway car with a very large and very deranged African-American man, shouting racial slurs and broadcasting eighty kinds of rage at everyone in earshot.

But with this new-fangled techological stuff, I can just filter him out. 'Cause he harshes my mellow, y'know?

Neat!
posted by jason's_planet at 8:27 PM on December 19, 2008

I don't know. The whole thing seemed more interesting as an Iain M. Banks novel, you know?
posted by voltairemodern at 8:33 PM on December 19, 2008

Memetic Engineering: This is the radical and controversial idea that the propagation and quality of information should be monitored and managed. For example, advocates of ME would argue that some religious memes are viral and and need to curbed.

Whoooooooaaa . . . . This shit is creepy.

Yes, monitored and managed. Because some opinions are inconvenient. And disturbing. We'll just filter them out, the same way we filter out sights, sounds and smells that are inconvenient.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:38 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

They'll fix you.

They fix everything.
posted by washburn at 8:48 PM on December 19, 2008

That's an interesting comparison, nasreddin, but I think nearly all social movements try to define themselves by stating there are "indisputable facts" about society which they recognize, as well as the belief that "we" are the ones moving forward while everyone else is stuck back in the old paradigm. That's not exclusively in the realm of Marxists.


The crucial similarity, I think, is the combination of techno- or science-fetishism with ideology. Technofetishism alone gets you someone like Cory Doctorow, while ideology alone gets you your average liberal or conservative. The two together get you Marxism and Transhumanism: fetishism and ideology merge and mutually create one another. Marxism justifies itself using "materialism" and "scientific laws," which are themselves defined in Marxist terms and somehow distinguished from "bourgeois empiricism." Transhumanism justifies itself using reified notions of technological progress, which are given descriptions drawn from Transhumanist ideology. (For instance, the Singularity--for which there is no clear evidence and no good reason. Even if we grant exponential progress, why should it exponentially progress into something incredibly radical, rather than, say, plateau?)

a louis wain cat is spot on, and in fact the hierarchical nature of Transhumanism echoes Marxism (i.e. Soviet Marxism) in exactly the same way. I don't even think it's necessary for the current elite to get in on the deal: in the Soviet Union, a new ruling class could use universalizing language ("eventually everyone will be able to benefit!") to conceal and reinforce its own arbitrary authority. The various tech-entrepreneurs who fancy themselves Brights or whatever today are in an excellent position to become the bureaucratic ruling class of a Transhumanist world. (this is all hypothetical, of course; chances are, the whole thing will just fizzle out harmlessly when the climate starts really going south).
posted by nasreddin at 8:51 PM on December 19, 2008

Thanks for the further explanation, nasreddin. What baffles me about Transhumanism is what you point to here: putting an ideology behind gadget geekery. Like everyone else, I too look forward to the day my consciousness is uploaded into a giant time-travelling space robot. I'm just not prepared to join the Giant Time-Travelling Space Robot Party.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 8:53 PM on December 19, 2008 [3 favorites]

The whole immortality kick I definitely find funny. Computers never wear out and break down? Over the lifespan of the universe?

And if the hardware you transfer your intelligence onto really can last the lifespan of the universe, look how I have to use the word lifespan. Eventually the universe winds down. You've figured out how to reverse entropy or pop into some other universe, maybe one you created yourself? That's nice. Eventually in one of these Jupiter brains in one of these universes a random undetected black hole is going to come and take you out, one of the other ridiculously transhuman entities will murder you, you'll kill yourself on purpose or by accident, etc.

For a different argument against immortality, reality is a noisy communications channel and it is impossible to transfer information with no chance of error. Eventually, no matter how hard you try, errors will creep in. At some point, googols and googols of years from now, you'll realize that there have been enough errors that your memories of the distant past are just fundamentally gone. Randomized. The person that existed googols and googols of years ago is dead.

All is transient. Deal. Maybe one day lifespans will last for lengths of time it requires esoteric notations merely to describe them, but saying science and technology will provide "forever" is fundamentally as religious as saying the Lord will sweep you up into heaven "forever."
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:05 PM on December 19, 2008 [3 favorites]

Oh, I forgot the other problem with upload immortality: Imagine playing Second Life every instant of your existence forever. Shit's gonna be full of furries and Goreans. I can only hope some brave /b/tards and goons upload for a while (you know they'd have the dignity to an hero eventually rather than delude themselves with dreams of forever) to properly troll the thing.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:12 PM on December 19, 2008 [4 favorites]

Transhumanists are annoying with their cocksure optimism and the name itself is grating, but anti transhumanist know nothings are far more stupid and short sighted. The definition of "transhuman" technology, basically any technology used to augment our normal abilities, is so broad and there are so many smart people working on them that there is no way they are not going to be developed short of a global catastrophe.

It's pretty rich that people are comparing trans humanists to communists, seeing as the only to stop transhumanism would be to impose draconian restrictions on research. And you are really telling me you are going to refuse a genetically engineered heart after a heart attack, or a computer chip to stop Alzheimer's just because you find Ray Kurzweil annoying.

These technologies are going to be part of are everyday lives very shortly. My guess is that cosmetic regenerative medicine will be the first place they get really big. People aren't going to be able to turn down cell based wrinkle reduction, hair regrowth and breast augmentation that looks exactly like the real thing. It's in our best interest to accept the technologies and work so that they are used to the best ends, not to just stick our head in the sand and pretend that being a pure "human" is the most noble thing someone can do.
posted by afu at 9:15 PM on December 19, 2008 [4 favorites]

I can only hope some brave /b/tards and goons upload for a while (you know they'd have the dignity to an hero eventually rather than delude themselves with dreams of forever)

"Dignity" and "/b/tard" do not belong in the same sentence.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 9:19 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

How much greater would the advantages of the wealthy and powerful be, if they could literally buy greater intelligence and longer life for themselves?

So, they already can. The best example is prenatal care and good childhood medical care. You miss the point if you respond that we ought to extend these privileges to as many people as we can. Of course we should, but if we want to do that we can't squash the technology when it first shows up on the grounds that it's expensive; let the rich buy it and likely it will get cheaper and more efficient over time.
posted by grobstein at 9:19 PM on December 19, 2008

I think this is what happens when you get a generation raised on science fiction. I don't understand basing your ideological beliefs on this kind of conjecture, and only a lifetime of romantic ideas about supercomputers and space travel can make someone think that humans can become gods in this manner. I mean, at one point I could identify with the kind of utopian longing for technology to erase death, disease, and disorder in this way; but it's a fantasy, and for well-educated scientifically-inclined types to treat it as some kind of cause is baffling to me. If you can't find enough value in a human lifespan as it is now, you need to give up the nihilism! But that's just my opinion.
posted by palidor at 9:28 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Finally, this discussion is getting better.

FWIW, I have to agree that my opinion of a lot of the militant Transhumanists is about the same as my opinion of militant anything-ists: they take their idea absurdly far, to the furthest possible extreme, building castles in the sky and trying to predict an unpredictable future with laser-like certainty. Some give no credence to the other side and assume anyone not with them is against them, and all must go according to plan, at any cost.

While I may not agree with the extremists and far-out loonies who are all too often the most visible face of the concept, or even with Kurzweil much of the time, the basic idea of trying to contiuously improve humanity makes sense and "feels right" as a cause to me, as does the suggestion that our bodies are going to be voluntarily different, and hopefully better, some day. I know people who are really into "body modification" right now. Why expect that trend won't continue to get weirder? Besides, I'm not ready to become a complete nihilist and shoot myself just yet. At least this gives me something.

We are getting into "meaning of life" territory in this discussion. I think it's safe to say none of us has truly "figured it all out". We each create our own meaning, and since we are all individuals, those meanings are going to be different. Some people are fortunate enough to be just naturally happy and satisfied. They may have no reason to do anything beyond what comes naturally to them. Others feel a need to make some mark before they vanish from existence. Still others cling to the hope that in the cosmic scheme of things, something will eventually matter. Humans seem the ones most likely to figure out a way to make things matter eventually, so they want to find ways to help humans eventually reach that goal, whatever the hell it is, and in doing so they feel they can claim a piece of it, even without knowing what it looks like.

Regardless, this is basically a post-religion religious argument, a struggle by each side to assert its "one true purpose for living" above all the others, but without any accepted, venerable "scripture" to frame the discussion. None of us ultimately have any claim to knowing what the hell we're talking about, but we're all still arguing about it, because -- dammit -- we know how we feel and the other side isn't going to make us feel the way they do.

I don't think I believe in the singularity, and in fact I have my own guess as to the biggest upcoming world-changing technologies, and I don't think AI is one of them. My guesses:

- Self-replicating machines (ETA now-ish)
- Devices that can scan gray matter accurately enough to build a computer model simulating a specific person (frozen brain + thin slicer + spectral analyzer + microscope + couple moving mirrors + big-ass computer + software. Are we even missing anything?)

Will these be Good Things? I dunno. But I'm willing to give it a try, and it beats the hell outta sitting around smoking pot all day and deluding ourselves into thinking that our friends and political leaders aren't blithering, wandering morons just like us and that being alive isn't just a damn crappy, painful accident that we regret more every day we live it.
posted by Xezlec at 9:32 PM on December 19, 2008 [6 favorites]

So I'm guessing you're a Western white male? I.e., someone who can quietly benefit from the last 2000 years of progress while still bashing it?

Wow, I hadn't realized western minorities and women didn't benefit from the last millennia of progress.
posted by Law Talkin' Guy at 9:40 PM on December 19, 2008

If you can't find enough value in a human lifespan as it is now, you need to give up the nihilism!

But my life would be meaningless if I gave up my nihilism!
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:45 PM on December 19, 2008 [5 favorites]

On a different note, who gets to decide what is "trans-human," since the label implies some degree of innate superiority over "regular human." Technology allows some of the poorest members of Western society to achieve feats that would have been seen as divine in the eyes of human civilization even a few hundred years ago. Are we trans-human relative to them?

If technology extends the human lifespan into the 200 year range during our lifetimes, are we trans-human relative to our dead grandparents? It all seems to depend on the foundation of human identity. While guess it's possible that technology could so pervasively change people in the future that they hold nothing in common with the "regular humans" of today, my suspicion is that humans' inherent tendencies to want to claim superiority over everyone else will lead them to lay claim to the title of "trans-human" long before it's objectively warranted.

What a very typically human thing for them to do.
posted by Law Talkin' Guy at 9:47 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wow, I hadn't realized western minorities and women didn't benefit from the last millennia of progress.

OK, I should have said "benefit the most". Sorry if anyone found that confusing.

But my life would be meaningless if I gave up my nihilism!

I'm not a nihilist, I'm a transhumanist.
posted by Xezlec at 9:52 PM on December 19, 2008

palidor, of course this kind of thinking is the result of a generation growing up reading science fiction. Its these sparks of creativity that has both fueled and been fueled by the amazing explosion of technology in our lifespans. But just because its the stuff of science fiction, don't think it should be dismissed - the communications satellite was imagined by Arthur C. Clarke, does that mean it doesn't exist? And that's just one of many real inventions first imagined as science fiction.

I'm more than a little surprised at the number of luddites on mefi. Suggesting we shouldn't engage in transhumanism - as if that were an option. As long as humans are around, we will continue to use technology to improve ourselves. Today its a cell phone that I can go on the internet and compare prices on - tomorrow its an implant in that receives the information directly to my brain.

Its not like we're gonna wake up one day and have our standard issue android body to download our consciousness to. It will happen in stages, and the youngest of us will accept it more readily than the old. Those that don't will eventually get old and die off without adopting. The bulk of their children will be more willing to embrace it and move on. Just like every other technology.

Kurzweil is wrong in most of the specifics of his prediction, but I think he's right in predicting such a radical change will be the next "step" for humans. Probably not 100 years, but 500? 1000? What else are we gonna do when we start building machines smarter than us? Just mill around like cattle while the machines do our thinking? No, we're gonna want a piece of that too.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:27 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Can I be a steampunk transhuman? I want to evolve into something with lots of brass and rivets and a little stamped and enameled name plate.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:35 PM on December 19, 2008 [3 favorites]

Suggesting we shouldn't engage in transhumanism - as if that were an option.

You conflate the use of tools with the adoption of an ideology. The latter is indeed (and should be) optional, and even the former isn't inevitable; that a tool exists does not mean it must be used.
posted by Iridic at 12:10 AM on December 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

Related

And as noted, Ms. Norton raises some very good points, but her affectations sometimes get in the way of her ideas.

Mostly, I wonder what happens if you pursue body modification past the point of no return (over-reliance on physical technology). Doesn't it straight-jacket your options to a treadmill of ever increasing technological prowess, which may be beyond our reach (much like how over use of antibiotics has given rise to super-bugs, which we really don't have a good response to).
posted by quintessencesluglord at 12:23 AM on December 20, 2008

I would just like to mention that I frequently get Facebook requests to be friends with weird transhumanists and to join their Life Extension groups. I have no idea who these people are or why they target me, so their attention made me wonder if I had some kind of John Connor importance for the future of (trans)humanity...
posted by theyexpectresults at 1:02 AM on December 20, 2008 [5 favorites]

I really don't know what the Singularity will be like, but for some reason I imagine 4chan will be involved.
posted by JHarris at 3:24 AM on December 20, 2008

I'm neither a luddite nor do I want to dismiss any kind of creative thinking about the future of humanity. What bothers me is the kind of magical thinking and assumptions that seem to pop up around transhumanism. Downloading consciousness to an android body and/or amorphous e-inforealm? We can't even begin to analyze the brain in a way that would make that even theoretically possible. Even the kind of genetic engineering necessary to confer greater intelligence or Halo skills or whatever is nowhere in sight. And don't get me started on the ~singularity~, whether it is some self-aware AI or self-replicating hyperwaffles. If anything, this kind of stuff isn't creative enough since it just extrapolates based on things emerging right now conflated with exponential growth and science fiction.

I'm not saying any of these things are impossible or that we shouldn't work towards them, nor am I really making any moral judgments about them; and if this was just a thread about humanity's distant future, it would certainly be a fun and interesting conversation (as this is!). And I'm sure groups of well-educated transhumanists have informed conversations about emerging technologies and many other here-and-now things. But why do they have to be transhumanists? Or posthumanists, or anything but some dudes talking about technology and/or futurism? To turn the idea that man must utilize technology to improve himself into a cause or ideology is very peculiar to me. We all want to end disease and suffering and to be "better." But why such a desire to be immortal or pseudo-gods or basically prove nature wrong (we may one day circumvent entropy, as someone said earlier)? I'd never say it can't happen, but why believe in it so strongly that you adopt a label for it?
posted by palidor at 3:38 AM on December 20, 2008 [3 favorites]

Whoops, I didn't mean to imply Ryvar claimed it was possibly to circumvent entropy or anything. I just think there are a lot of assumptions about humanity's future that imply a kind of open-ended potential for manipulating the natural world. I smell a lot of... hubris. But perhaps I am making assumptions.
posted by palidor at 4:00 AM on December 20, 2008

Perhaps approaching the asymptote of the singularity is asymptotically difficult?

Buckminster Fuller plotted time of circumnavigation over history, and sure enough, that also reaches a singularity around now. What comes next in the progression: foot, horseback, boat, airplane, spaceship? Teleportation (travel at the speed of light)? Apparently, each step becomes progressively easier, because the time between each step keeps shrinking. But, let's say we reach the speed limit of the universe. What happens after that? Infinite speed of circumnavigation is infinitely impossible.

Maybe we hit, rather than scale, the wall. Time will tell.
posted by AppleSeed at 5:03 AM on December 20, 2008

Jesus, I paid $5 for this?

The cool thing is, you didn't even have to pay $5 for this. The only reason to pay the $5 is so you could say Jesus, I paid $5 for this?
posted by telstar at 5:20 AM on December 20, 2008 [7 favorites]

"Shouldn't that be H++ ?"

H#
posted by Auz at 6:10 AM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wow, I hadn't realized western minorities and women didn't benefit from the last millennia of progress.

OK, I should have said "benefit the most". Sorry if anyone found that confusing.

Let me expound upon my own point, then. It bothers the hell out of me when people use "let me guess-- straight white male, right?" as some kind of pejorative in a policy argument. I doubt very much that the people who do this would countenance making assumptions about non-white, non-male posters based on their views (since that would reflect invidious prejudice based on assumptions). And I've never seen anyone else's race or sex thrown in their face on MF as part of an attempt to assail or devalue their opinions.

And most of all, what does being white or male have to do with the validity of someone's opinions on trans-humanism? Do you mean to say that black people or women have more knowledge or more informed opinions regarding trans-humanism? Do we need some kind of "oppression cred" in order to have valid opinions on bioethics?
posted by Law Talkin' Guy at 7:43 AM on December 20, 2008 [7 favorites]

Wow, the Metafilter hivemind sure is conservative. Me, I like the idea of enhancement and extension and change. Maybe the information system that runs in my nervous system will be able to make it off this biological platform that was designed to fall apart after, ooh, thirty or forty years. Transhumanist themes run through my art; I may not have the technological acumen to reconfigure myself but I try to inspire people to wok towards it.

But on the other hand I've already done some radical modification to the body I was born with: I'm transgender; I've stuffed enough hormones into me to crudely hack my appearance across the gender lines. When you've done something like that, pouring your consciousness into twenty-seven different robot bodies who wander off in all directions, occasionally swapping direct memory downloads when they meet, doesn't seem that radical any more.

The whole of human history has been one of technology extending and enhancing our lives. We can't know where we'll end up, but we can extrapolate trends and play with them. And we can probably be positive that some barely-begun technology will change the world in ways as unforseen as the digital computer did; in 2108 an issue of H+ will be as comedic as the 1908 dirigible-filled skies over brutal modernist megacities are to us.

But playing with ideas about the future is a crucial step on the way to making it happen, and being able to adapt to what does come out of left field and change the world.

Meanwhile, I find it profoundly ironic that H+ is so wedded to the form of a "magazine" that it releases itself in the form of a PDF where each logical page is a 2-page spread, and thus eye-strainingly small on my laptop screen.
posted by egypturnash at 7:55 AM on December 20, 2008 [3 favorites]

To turn the idea that man must utilize technology to improve himself into a cause or ideology is very peculiar to me.

Well, I'll agree with you that it's probably not good to be ideological about things, especially things that are really hard to predict. But it doesn't seem bad as a cause.

What is your cause? What gives you hope when so many terrible things are happening all over the world? And why is yours less peculiar? I keep hearing people who apparently dream of Green-party tofu worlds where humans are all vegans and live in harmony with nature, or liberal paradises in which everyone is truly equal and friendly to others all the time. I guess those just don't seem any less strange or unlikely to me, and so I've just picked the one I feel I can do something to help get closer to.

But if you think that's strange, my other cause is the metric system!

And most of all, what does being white or male have to do with the validity of someone's opinions on trans-humanism?

OK, on further thought, you're right. I was out of line, and I apologize.
posted by Xezlec at 7:57 AM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

What are we arguing about exactly?

Transhumanism is the idea that, through technological progress, we can become superhuman. That means solving enough of the current problems with humanity that some term other than "humanity" becomes appropriate. But, since one's choice of terminology is arbitrary, I could decide that we've already become MondoHumans. Bamf! Instant singularity.

I don't think that anyone on this particular forum would dispute the idea that we ought to use technology to repair human problems. Dividing people into groups based on how advaaaaaanced they are is disagreeable, but it's something we've always done. And you know what? If you support the cause of using technology to fix human problems, then I bet you also support the cause of using technology to make people more accepting of one another. For example, by using newly invented means of communication to foster discussion between otherwise disparate classes of people.

Supposing that the progress of all our technologies will proceed along exponential curves forever is silly, but that idea is called singularitarianism, and we are commenting about a magazine on transhumanism, which is more general.

Hmmm, I guess I should go read the magazine now.
posted by LogicalDash at 8:18 AM on December 20, 2008

I smell a lot of... hubris. But perhaps I am making assumptions.

Well, take a look at what I wrote about my personal motivation:

can you really blame people for clutching at straws? As far as I can tell, there isn't even anything else worth doing.

That's not hubris, that's desperation. That's what bothers me most about Transhumanists and their figureheads - I strongly suspect that they're trying to put a big shiny MARCH OF PROGRESS veneer on what is really just existential desperation.

I think it's okay to be desperate - in fact I think it's the only sane response to the universe in which we find ourselves in, because as far as I can tell death renders my self and all my actions completely meaningless.

What I'd really like to see is a Transhumanist spokesperson saying "I don't want to die" in a quiet, cracking voice. No "MOORE'S LAW WILL MAKE ME GOD" penis-thrusting, just an admission that the final state of every human up until this point has been the most horrifying outcome imaginable. That the 100 billion homo sapiens estimated to have lived and died up until this point have had their lives poured out into sand.

I want to see tears of bitterness and then scrambling, clawing action- a headlong flight as we are collectively driven by the most terrifying of scourges.

But that's just me, and I can't really claim that my actions live up to my words or beliefs. I want to fix that.
posted by Ryvar at 8:42 AM on December 20, 2008 [9 favorites]

I think Fukuyama's ideas are interesting, but I deadlocked when I read, "...If we never felt jealousy, we would also never feel love."

The acceptance and even encouragement of jealousy as an aspect of love is one of the most toxic and completely irrelevant throwbacks to our earliest ancestors, and definitely can be (and ought to be) transcended.
posted by hermitosis at 9:01 AM on December 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

I see a lot of overlap between transhumanism and the bodymod communities. Both are pushing the human body forward (or sideways, or backwards if you want to think of it that way). I don't always agree with the motivation behind it all nor do I intend on splitting my cock in half, tattooing my or and getting magnets/RFID chips implanted in my fingertips any time soon. But I fully support people who do. Hell, I even applaud them.

The world needs more people that look at things from a different point of view (with the caveat that this different world view doesn't involve hurting other people).

I'm also a borderline technofetishist who enjoys reading Gibson and Transmetropolitan, so transhumanists get a bit more leeway from me than they might from other people.
posted by slimepuppy at 11:22 AM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

'tattooing my eyeballs'

The word was eaten by this infernal electric machine!
posted by slimepuppy at 11:24 AM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

The worlds worst inner party would probably involve being sandwiched between Kevin Warrick and Richard Dawkins. At Christmas time.
posted by Artw at 12:21 PM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

The worlds worst inner party would probably involve being sandwiched between Kevin Warrick and Richard Dawkins. At Christmas time.

That would be pretty bad, but it can't even touch getting sandwiched between Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh on election day. Sorry.
posted by Xezlec at 12:49 PM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

These are the same people who were telling us to learn some hobbies, because we were going to have a three-day work week and flying cars by 1990.
posted by dunkadunc at 12:57 PM on December 20, 2008

All of this WILL happen because all that shit is marketable. The rich will have it, the poor will suffer, and, on the whole, nothing will really change.
posted by Afroblanco at 1:19 PM on December 20, 2008

You conflate the use of tools with the adoption of an ideology. The latter is indeed (and should be) optional, and even the former isn't inevitable; that a tool exists does not mean it must be used.

Can you think of a single example of an entire class of technology that was invented and then never used?
posted by signalnine at 1:20 PM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Can you think of a single example of an entire class of technology that was invented and then never used?

No, though I can think of a class of technology that has seen exactly two uses. Our existence depends upon our ability to resist that particular technology's further application, so I don't think it's foolish to disagree with the idea that the existence of a tool absolutely compels its use.
posted by Iridic at 1:56 PM on December 20, 2008

All the that pre-test ban atomic dick waving most certainly counts as use. As does, arguably, juts letting the things sit in silos and letting it be known you have them.
posted by Artw at 2:03 PM on December 20, 2008

Was going to try and read the zine with an open mind, until I noticed that R.U. Sirius was the editor. Just no.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 3:18 PM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Actually, I believe your local patent office is full of technologies that were developed but never used. You just never hear about them because, you know, no one ever used them. Like FreeBSD, or example.

Technologies, in order to have an impact, must have a utility commensurate to their expense. This is an inherently economic problem. If I design a new kind of hammer, no one will bother with it if it costs 100x as much as a normal hammer but only does the job 5% better than a normal hammer. (Unless there's a good marketing department and/or the US military involved. And even then, the use lifespan will be only as long as it takes people to realize they've been swindled.)

I know of entire branches of mathematics that have been left to moulder because they stopped being useful for one reason or another. And all they cost is time to learn...
posted by kaibutsu at 3:28 PM on December 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

Isn't this the shit that ruined Dresden Codak?
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 3:40 PM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

To continue ranting, the inherent problem of technofetishism is that it disregards the utility of the technologies involved, something that I think plagues Western society as a whole already.

Does owning a car actually improve one's life? Or does it just cost a bunch of money, which must be earned by driving the car to a soul-eating job, so that one has the money to pay for the car? All while degrading the quality of the atmosphere, no less...

Will owning a flying car be appreciably better?

Here the 'lower' technology of the bicycle wins hands down: it is cheap, easy to maintain, and actually makes its user healthier and happier. With a bit of forethought and design work, one needn't even get wet in a rainstorm. It's the perfect solution to the transportation problem, provided one doesn't live in a city designed around the inferior car solution.

Answers to many of the basic human problems already exist. But it is in the economic interests of a few to get us to fixate on new electronic gadgets of questionable utility.

Technologies destroy as they create. Notice that far fewer people knew how to play an instrument in the US after the introduction of the radio -- a communal cornerstone of people's home lives was turned into a hierarchical, centrally disseminated industry. Likewise, thanks to the market economy and mass production, most people likely won't be making Christmas gifts for friends or family.

I'm not saying these are bad technologies, but certainly things were lost with their adoption. It is important to choose which technologies we individually choose to adopt, and to leave aside those that don't actively make our lives qualitatively better. Technofetishism too often leaves nuanced questions of technology by the wayside, in favor of fantisizing about theoretical 'perfect' technologies free of unintended side effects.
posted by kaibutsu at 3:43 PM on December 20, 2008 [8 favorites]

PDF Magazines are the future!

Yeah, like seriously, what? I thought hypertext worked okay! If you must build something like this to satisfy your (deeply ironic!) print fetishism, can you at least build a working website for those of us whose heads are poking a little further into the future?
posted by grobstein at 4:48 PM on December 20, 2008

To continue ranting, the inherent problem of technofetishism is that it disregards the utility of the technologies involved, something that I think plagues Western society as a whole already.

This. I like the Amish general attitude technology though not necessarily their specific judgements. They're not actually anti-technology per se, and they use more than you may think. It's just that they don't merely think "Can we use this technology?" but consider "Should we use this technology and how?"
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:56 PM on December 20, 2008

I would just like to mention that I frequently get Facebook requests to be friends with weird transhumanists and to join their Life Extension groups. I have no idea who these people are or why they target me, so their attention made me wonder if I had some kind of John Connor importance for the future of (trans)humanity...
^{posted by theyexpectresults at 10:02 AM on December 20}

Eponysterical.
posted by ymgve at 5:04 PM on December 20, 2008

My father, who is a molecular biologist, pointed out how buggy the human genome is, full of vast stretches of DNA that do nothing.

Rather like Microsoft code, the programmers churning out code in the form of patches that themselves create other bugs, nobody able to comprehend the whole.

As for augmentation of the class divide, this is already worrisome. I've noticed how much healthier some professional-class Americans who are actually athletic (rather than viewers of professional sports) look than some sectors of working-class Americans. You could cal the yuppie marathoners "posthuman," only it's the stiffs who are eating "posthuman" food, junk food engineered by corporations and given flavors and colors never known in nature.
posted by bad grammar at 5:18 PM on December 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

As for augmentation of the class divide, this is already worrisome.

As well as the divide that exists between wealthy countries and developing countries.

I live in Queens, NY, in an immigrant-majority neighborhood. Five minutes from my house, there is a day laborer pickup site. If those guys were willing to pay thousands of dollars to criminals, run miles through the Southwestern desert and stow away in cargo containers, all for the chance to stand in the freezing cold hoping that a contractor might show up with $10 an hour gruntwork (and rip them off as often as not), what sorts of things might they do to get a piece of the Transhumanist-utopian pie?
posted by jason's_planet at 5:38 PM on December 20, 2008

What I'd really like to see is a Transhumanist spokesperson saying "I don't want to die" in a quiet, cracking voice. No "MOORE'S LAW WILL MAKE ME GOD" penis-thrusting, just an admission that the final state of every human up until this point has been the most horrifying outcome imaginable. That the 100 billion homo sapiens estimated to have lived and died up until this point have had their lives poured out into sand.

Ah, then you want Eliezer Yudkowsky. A big chunk of his writing at Overcoming Bias is on exactly this theme.
posted by teraflop at 9:03 PM on December 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

I am going to eat lots of nootropics, upsize and overclock my brain and think of how to immanetize the Singularity. You'll know when I've figured it out.

In the meantime I have to settle for dental composite and contact lenses and a titanium plate holding C4 to C5.
posted by exlotuseater at 12:07 AM on December 21, 2008

You know that noise a cat makes just before it vomits explosively all over the carpet? That sort of pained yowl, almost like a single-note air raid siren? And you think, Jesus, what's up with the fucking cat, and you run and find it just in time to catch it going "ca-chunk...ca-chunk...ca-chunk...ca-chunk...ca-BLEAUGH"?

Transhumanism, and talk about transhumanism, is essentially that. You run frantically to see what the noise was about, and find nothing more than a tortured display of regurgitation.
posted by turgid dahlia at 9:52 PM on December 21, 2008