Transhumanism: Past, Present and Future
The train is late. You send a mental request to the city’s subway system for the time of the next arriving train. Five minutes. Someone sneezes nearby and the nanobots in your bloodstream rush to eradicate any invading germs. The train arrives and you enter the car on your way to your grandmother’s birthday party. At one hundred and one she is still the national champion of her handball league.
These are a few of the possibilities Transhumanism can bring.
On June 25, 2009, the McNally Jackson bookstore in conjunction with the New York Transhumanism Association hosted a forum on the transhumanism movement. Transhumanism looks to blend the areas of science and technology together with the physical and mental states of human beings.
Clark Matthews, a writer/editor and researcher when it comes to cyberculture, discussed the history behind transhumanism. Thoughts of transhumanism go back to a time when Dante coined the word “transumare”. Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous, and Max More were cited as major contributors to transhumanism ideas. Huxley suggested a wireless transition into transhumanism through cultural evolution while More believed that adoption of a “wirehead” society would be through personal choice. A controlled future was suggested by Jose Delgado where people can be reprogrammed to eradicate criminal behavior.
Artist Shane Hope presented his visual representations of life in a transhumanist world. His Molecular Modeling, or Mol Mods, prints and his Compile-a-Child drawings visualized the existence of the enhanced human. His work is on display at the Winkleman Gallery until August 1, 2009.
Stuart Dambrot, physiological psychologist, discussed the Singularity – the point at which humanity is irrevocably transformed by technological change and where AI’s are more powerful than humans. Predications include a merging of sciences from neuroscience to nanotechnology, biorecalibration – leading to increased longevity and improved health and programmable matter to name a few.