In a Society of Explosive Technological Advances Come Technological Anxieties
Is there nothing about human beings that cannot conceive of as a technical problem?
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
It’s the holy grail of science; ambitions ran lofty — for a creation myth, for a massive act of self-love. We replace the Godhead with a perfect self. We devise an improved, more modern version of ourselves and delight in the joy of invention, the ecstasy of mastery.
By now, we have passed the first steps towards the fulfillment of an ancient dream, the start of the long lesson we would communicate that however complicated we were, however faulty and problematic to describe in our unworldly actions and modes of being, we could be imitated and ameliorated — the dream of ages, the triumph of humanism — or its angel of demise.
In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution shattered earlier conceptions about human creation and undermined the literal biblical interpretation and, for some, their faith. Until this point, natural selection had been an accidental phenomenon, but now, thanks to technology, humans can intercede in this process. The evolution of humanity is experiencing a radical shift from the homo sapiens species to the more nuanced homo digitalis, a specie of robots with superhuman capabilities.
In a society of explosive technological advances come technological anxieties.
The future keeps arriving
Prediction of humanity’s dominance over the earth is confronted with several existential questions, often evoking an emotional cocktail of fear, excitement, pessimism, and hope.
The ethical, moral, and social challenges and consequences inevitably affect the next phase of civilization and human evolution. What will happen when we create life, where autonomous machines come to destruction and a new race of people who, not unlike us, are trying to define who they are?
It is true that since the creation of humankind, we have experienced the ups and downs of this world, the disabilities, and the limited competence of our mortal bodies. Throughout their evolution, most humans refused to accept death as an end, and so all believed in alternative life stories which continued after their worldly extermination.
We have created gods in our form and practiced occult traditions and alchemy. In the world of myths and fantasies, humans constructed half-humanoid and half-robotic creatures of their dreams.
Transhumanism
Science replaced occultism, and transhumanism is not such a new movement. The term transhuman first materialized in Henry Francis Carey’s 1814 translation of Dante’s Paradiso in the final book of the Divine Comedy. Dante has finished his voyage through paradise and is ascending into heaven when his human flesh suddenly transmuted, yet he’s hazy about the characteristics of his new form. “Words,” he writes, “may not tell of that transhuman change.”
In 1957, Julian Huxley introduced transhumanism into the scientific discourse when he openly deliberated the possibility of people going beyond their limited biological state with the benefit of the latest technology.
When human intelligence starts to fuse with technology
Transhumanism is the ultimate combination of man and machine, a quest for immortality most likely resulting from the inadequacy and inequality of man — replete with alternating regrets about the past, occasional fears about the future, barely conscious of the present, except in the apparent sensory realm.
We have seen a common theme and obstacle throughout science fiction stories of humans’ struggles with mortality and their attempt to conquer it. There are many stories where a fear that humans obliterate by their doings, a natural disaster, or some other entity. Other stories fanaticize about a future where humans will have solved the death problem and proven superior to other organisms and life forms.
In short, we follow our desires. We aim to escape our mortality, confront or replace God with a perfect self. We devise a more modern version of ourselves and rejoice in the triumph of our invention. And the realization that we can be imitated, however, complicated we are, however faulty and problematic to describe.
But it should be no surprise since we’ve already existed as a cliché long before our new versions arrive. After all, imagination is fleeter than history and technological advances.
The Filofax, fondue sets, rotary phones, the calculators are gone, as well as many other gadgets relegated to the mountain of rubbish. The future keeps us one step ahead. Bright new toys rust before they reach us. Artificial people become more like us. They’ll become us, then be more than us. We’re, after all, open to experiences, desire new toys. They will arrive at our homes with factory settings, as God had once delivered Adam’s companion.
We’ve already rehearsed this future in books, TV dramas, and films. Changing or duplicating human nature has been a staple of science fiction and related movies and television — like Blade Runner, The Six Million Dollar Man, or The Matrix — that it has been easy to dismiss as entertainment or diversion.
We’ve grown used to seeing human actors walk with a glazed look, stiff as corpses. Those images prepare us for a life with our clones from the future, the dream of ages, the triumph of humanism.
Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and cryogenic freezing machine automation have augmented us. We slurp psychostimulants called coffee, sport carbon-based body modifications, replace worn-out joints with ceramic alloy counterparts and enhance our brains with smartphones and data clouds.
Today, transhumanists wield society to engage in a growing philosophical debate around our values as individuals, countries, and species. What do we value most? Is it intelligence, self-fulfillment, success, happiness, quality of life, or something else?
Final thoughts
Transhumanism’s philosophy raises inquiries about how technology transforms the meaning of being human. Questions about the two distinct classes of humans capable of existing together in harmony. How will augmentation relate to human identity? What will be worth living for in a world where radical technologies displace human finitude? Yet, what makes the transhumanist movement so enticing is that it undertakes to restore, through science, the transcendent hopes that some vital core of our being will endure and perhaps transcend the inevitable ruin of flesh.
To a non-transhumanist, limits are built into the fabric of reality and our being. Some aspects of ourselves and the world are uncertain and can never be made certain. Can ignorance, suffering, or the complex problem of consciousness, the soul, be reconceived as solvable technical challenges? Are we overlooking the vast domain of everyday existence? What about famine, absent illness, war, or other pressures? A lot of life is lived in the neutral zone, familiar, but a grey one, unremarkable, forgotten, hard to describe.
The quest for perfect selves is bound to surprise us; they might fail us in ways beyond our imagination. Tragedy is a probability, but not dullness.