Topic > Transhumanism and the posthuman future: the consequences of technological progress

At the beginning of the 21st century, humanity is entering a new phase of its development, when scenarios of technological improvement of human nature cease to seem fantastic. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayInitially, the creation of new biomedical technologies was aimed at correcting some pathological states of the human body, restoring its disturbed functions and structures, what was usually referred to the field of medicine. Currently, however, this trend to create and use “human-oriented” technologies takes on a new vector. The growing interest of not only scientists and engineers, but also the general public, is attracted by the ideas of human improvement, the empowerment of a person with exceptional abilities and properties - physical, intellectual, mental and even moral, which can develop abilities and opportunities at a new, previously unattainable level. The emergence of transhumanism as a philosophical approach, which raises the question of new forms of human existence in the context of technological and information progress, responds to the changes that are taking place. Transhumanist ideas derive from the idea of ​​the imperfection of human nature and the need for its improvement (enhancement). Transhumanism is a worldview which, based on the advanced technological achievements of science, confirms the need for the evolution/enhancement of human beings. Man is represented as a being who has not completed his evolution and is capable of making an "evolutionary breakthrough" with the help of scientific and technical tools. Transhumanism, in fact, is the desire to go beyond the physiological characteristics of a person, which represents the individual as potentially unlimited in his development. Accordingly, a posthuman, in their understanding, is a physiologically completely modified person who has exceeded the limit of his original innate possibilities. Transhumanism intends to build a new person, whose abilities will be artificially set at birth, regulated, and all imperfections, such as suffering, disease, aging, death, will be eliminated. Therefore, transhumanism reduces a person to a certain set of characteristics that can be controlled. As a consequence of this, new forms of responsibility arise, in which the boundary between people and things will be erased. The improvement therefore not only brings purely technical consequences, but also consequences on an ethical level. With the help of such technologies, a person is able to change his body, its functions, "improve" himself. Having lost a leg or other limb, a person can get a prosthesis, which will allow him not only to stand and regain the ability to walk, but in addition to this, it will allow him to run much faster than a normal person. Or: after surgery, a person who previously saw poorly, improved his vision above normal. Is this a cure or an immediate "improvement"? How do you draw a line between treatment and “improvement”? Many problems hide here, starting with what can be considered an improvement, and not simply a cure, and ending with a difficult question about the status of the norm with respect to human nature. The questions "what is a person?" they also present themselves very acutely here. Transhumanism pays very little attention to this point, it considers human nature as something given and taken for granted, while transhumanists have not said anything intelligible on this topic. The transhumanist discourse tells us about the possibility of a moral "updating".a person. Moral improvement of a person with the use of modern technology is by transhumanists - a real humanitarian help for humanity. Therefore, it is necessary to give the opportunity to promote such technologies to the masses, to allow everyone to be involved in it. But those who cannot afford such "improvements" with their bodies may become less competitive in society. (The appearance of a class of people who do not simply surpass others at the level of properties, but also at the objective level of "improvement". With a little futurological reflection, we will get a new "race" of people (superhumans? ), that will clash with ordinary people. Such technologies can cause (generate) new forms of inequality and injustice. Now the trend of research on the brain and consciousness, especially consciousness, has begun, although this is dangerous territory, because no one knows what it is. What we can say is that "I know that I am". This is called the first-person experience. This is what we hope that almost no animals and artificial intelligence have conferences that, according to her, it will be possible in the near future to insert chips that will speed up the course of biochemical processes in the brain, a chip that will increase memory and improve the brain, the liver eaten by cirrhosis due to excessive alcohol consumption, can be replaced with a new one, which will be grown from your stem cells. "This is real, not jokes and not metaphors. The heart can also be replaced now, the hands-feet broken in Courchevel, easily replaced. Eyes, ears." Is there something of yours? Is it still me? This is a serious ethical question. Is there stability of personality, is there stability of sex and is there this personality itself?" I can't stand social networks, even if I appear to, but someone else does them there, not me. And now how can I prove that I don't is it me. Is the person you correspond with a real person or is it a ghost? And is it one of a kind? Or is it a program that represents a million personalities and there is no person at all? Where is it, now, does it have a address, does it have a personality? It's like in the popular scientific literature about artificial intelligence and it's called the liquid world, when everything has disintegrated, separated." an unpleasant but important question: how much do digital technologies change us? We are seeing what is now called the Google effect: we sit on the needle very quickly getting information at any time. This leads to the fact that we have a different type of memory. Working memory becomes very short. In 2011, an experiment was published in the journal Science: it was shown that students who have constant and fast access to the computer (and now that's practically everything) can memorize much less information than those who were students before this era. This means that the brain has changed since then. Now everything goes to the fact that it becomes an appendage of the computer. We store in long-term computer memory what should have been stored in our brains. According to McLuhan's theory, summarized by "the medium is the message" states that "any invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and this extension also requires new relationships or new balances between other organs and extensions of the body”. In general, for McLuhan, mediums are technologies that with different degrees of intensity influence the appearance of society at one time or another in history: "it is the medium that shapes and controls the extent and form of association and human action”. The most intense influence, according to McLuhan, on the development of society has had alternatively:1) the invention of writing;2)the invention of the printing press;3) the emergence of electrical technology. Each of these technologies changes man's relationship with feelings: in communities where speech prevails, hearing is a more important ability than sight; with the advent of writing, sight becomes more important than hearing and with the advent of printing, hearing finally gives way to sight. For McLuhan, the man of the era of printing technologies is a visually oriented person. The reverse movement from the visual one occurs in the era of the emergence of electrical technology: the enormous speed with which electricity can transmit information, narrows a person's social world, turning the world into a "global village". Furthermore, McLuhan understands electrical technology as an external extension of the human nervous system: “Today, after more than a century of electrical technology, we have extended our own central nervous system in a global embrace.” Each of us surely at least once in our life thought about life, what awaits us in the future: whether robots will make people a serious competition, whether there will be flying cars or, for example, food, medicine, houses can be printed on 3D printers . Meanwhile, in the 21st century, filmmakers and thinkers show us an "apocalyptic" vision of the future, where the world is corroded by economic and social problems, where one ecological catastrophe is replaced by another, new diseases and phobias appear. However, not all professional researchers see the future this way. Ekaterina Shulman - Associate Professor of the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Science and Technology has a rather cheerful and optimistic view of the future. In his lectures, Shulman often talks about the extraordinary times we will live in. According to her, society will move from the industrial economy to the post-deficit economy, to the post-work economy. “We will live in a world where the idea of ​​a working day will dissolve,” says Ekaterina Shulman, “Even the old pattern – getting an education and working as a profession until you die – is a thing of the past.” We will find ourselves in a world where a person is constantly learning. You will not have a certain profession and a certain job, people will work, uniting around projects and not around jobs. "While it is possible to outline only a certain general outline of this hypothetical future, any feature of the future, which we can see already in the present (and the future, of course, arises from the present, and does not suddenly arise in its final form), they represent a repetition of the past on a new technical and social level. We are entering an era in which the production of goods will cease to be the highest value and the main human occupation tools for this transition are automation, robotics, new communications and information technology. Since many sectors are now highly technological, they require less physical human labor but, on the other hand, require human, leader and creative participation. Apparently, the principle of organization and the way of life will change. The usual "going to work" disappears, we are already entering a period when the order of life is changing, due to the growth of technologies, society will work no less, but now in rich countries where there is talk of reducing working day and reduction of the working week. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay So trying to answer the question of where to put these extra hands? A rather new problem is that in the past there was the problem of the overabundance of the population, which had nothing to eat, now there is something to eat, but there is the problem of extra hands, that is, of people whose work it is not.