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To be human is to be transhuman

Geschreven op zondag 13 april 2014 in de categorie transhuman

transhumanism

So there’s a great line by Shakespeare in which he says, „We know what we are. We know not what we may be.”

And in the age of accelerating technologies in which we extend the cognitive reach of our minds, the perimeters of our humanness, with these extensions of self, these exoskeletons, these technological scaffoldings - you know, the wings of our aircrafts and the signals traveling through our smartphones, sending our thoughts, electrified, at the speed of light, across oceans of sky - we redefine and extend what it means to be human.

Edward O. Wilson says we have actually decommissioned natural selection, and now we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

We are now the chief agents of evolutions.

We have reverse-engineered the software of biology and are about to rewire and upgrade it, redefine what it is to be a Homo Sapien. Juan Enriquez uses the term Homo Evolutis, the being that evolves itself, that transforms itself, right? Ray Kurzweil - we didn’t stay in the caves. We haven’t stayed on the planet. Biology - just another membrane to be transcended.

You know, Marvin Minsky used to say, will robots inherit the Earth? Yes, they will. But they will be our children.

You know, I love this idea, because we hear the term „transhumanism” and what it means to be human is to be transhuman. We are the species that transforms and transcends. We never stop. We always did. It’s what we are.

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