Russell Blackford is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Evolution and Technology and a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. [2]
Parijata Mackey is an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, and an Intern with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
Warning: Advances in technology are closer than they appear.
The doubling rate of medical knowledge is three years – that is, the next three years of medical research will yield as much knowledge as has been yielded in all of human history. The next three years will double our knowledge again, and again, and so on. This exponential growth in knowledge will rapidly enable us to eradicate disease and radically improve the human condition.
Indeed, we will be able to look beyond curing the sick, towards a future in which we make ourselves more than healthy.
We will be able to enhance our memory and our intellectual capacity. We will use technology to make ourselves faster, more efficient, and radically longer-lived. We will be able to augment our physical strength, stamina, and resistance to disease. We might enhance specific skills, such as visual acuity or musical talent.
In the extreme, we will correct the molecular wear-and-tear that causes deterioration and death – reversing the aging process itself. Humans might even obtain entirely new capacities, such as infrared vision, or bat-like echolocation.
The body of thought that deals with enhancement technologies is called transhumanism. In essence, transhumanists favor using technology to enhance mental and physical human capacities.
For transhumanists, the human species is about to begin a new form of evolution. Instead of biological evolution – slow processes of survival, reproduction, and adaptation over geological time – it will be powered by technologies that will increasingly work their way inwards, radically transforming our bodies and minds.
– Arthur C. Clarke
Where are the flying cars we thought we’d have? Is transhumanism too outlandish, too futuristic to be taken seriously?
Perhaps, but the same could once have been said of wireless internet, aviation, organ transplants and the contraceptive pill. If transhumanists are correct, how soon will we see these changes?
Transhumanists point to the exponential rate of progress to answer these questions. The power of information technology doubles every year or so, a trend that has held true for over 40 years. At this rate, the price-performance power of computers will increase by a factor of one billion within the next twenty-five years, while shrinking in size by a factor of a thousand. This rapid rate of progress is not limited to computers.
The Human Genome Project relied on the same exponential growth. The rate of genome sequencing increased rapidly, while costs dropped dramatically. Even now, years after the genome project, we are witnessing exponential advances in genomic technology. It will not be long before an understanding of your own genome will allow you to truly personalize your medical care. This year, sequencing company Complete Genomics will offer individual human genomes for $5000. Will you get yours done?
Nanotechnology is another field experiencing exponential growth. We have created nanoscale robots with functional arms. We have created blood-cell-sized devices that cure diabetes in rats – floating through the bloodstream, dispensing controlled amounts of insulin. It will not be long before these technologies are applied to humans, making us healthier, smarter, stronger, and more long-lived.
If we analyze the rate of progress from an exponential, rather than linear, standpoint, it becomes stunningly clear that radical enhancement technologies will be available within a few decades.
We approach a turning point in human history. Never before has the rate of progress reached its current pitch. Technological interventions will create changes so dramatic, that it will make intuitive sense to call the deeply-altered people of the future posthumans.
We are not posthuman yet, but we are transitional humans: the trans in transhumanism refers to this process of historical transition, not to anything transcendent.
– Germaine Greer
Some see this potential as dangerous, because it threatens their view of what it means to be human. Transhumanism's core, therefore, provides enormous scope for discussion and debate. Questions abound. Some are questions of morality – the new kind of evolution should be conducted within ethical constraints, but which, exactly, are the proper constraints? How quickly will the transition take place, and where might it end? Should we attempt to accelerate it, slow it down, or direct its course? Is access to enhancement technologies a right, or should it be highly regulated? How will technology impact our markets, our cultures, and our laws?
Is there some fundamental difference between using medicine to make a sick person well, and making a healthy person more than healthy? Is there a line between enhancement and therapy? Opponents accuse transhumanists of defying nature in some inexcusable way. But how do we define “nature” – and, how will our laws define it? By one definition of nature, everything we do is natural—in accordance with natural law. By another definition, almost everything we do is unnatural, requiring artifice – but many of those things are morally acceptable, even good. No one has successfully defined nature in a way that condemns something because it is “unnatural.”
Perhaps the most serious concern is societal – the benefits of emerging technologies may favor the rich over the poor, increasing barriers between social classes. This concern is legitimate, and transhumanist thinkers are well aware of it. Much of their work is devoted to discerning how new technologies can be distributed equitably, within reasonable bounds.
Transhumanists are sometimes accused of being reckless, irresponsible, or naïve – of wanting to move too quickly for societies and ecological systems to adapt. But transhumanists, again, are well aware of these issues, and many of their discussions are about the dangers as much as the promises of rapid technological change. This charge is unfair to transhumanist thinkers who spend much of their time assessing the risks of moving ahead with change – and the risks of not moving ahead. Many of the cures we create for illnesses can also be used to enhance healthy people. Will we deny people treatment while we hesitate? Will we be blamed one day for the countless deaths we fail to prevent? Might it even be called murder?
These issues are discussed with passion by transhumanists, bioethicists, scientists, economists, theologians, sociologists, psychologists, and legislators. Reports and think tanks have been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, DARPA, the EU, Google, NASA, and multiple governments. Transhumanist thinkers have developed sophisticated concepts, which are constantly debated and refined.
Transhumanism, then, is not just a philosophy. It is a broad cultural and intellectual movement, with no central body of dogma. The essential idea, however, is increasingly familiar; each day, it becomes easier to believe.
It's a natural reaction to the steady march of progress, full of caution and hope, innovation and courage, looking ahead to the technological marvels our future could hold.
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