I've been looking at trends that fall under the category of technological augmentations of the traditional human individual. These would be generally associated with what is called "transhumanism."
There are really two influential attitudes toward the next step in human evolution: posthumanism and transhumanism. The terms are often used loosely, but they refer to two different attitudes to how we should be conceiving of our future. Broadly put, transhumanism sees our future as a continuation of the humanist conception "Man" and human nature, but augmented by technology. Thus, we will continue to see the human individual as the measure of all things, and we will focus on the ideals (Western) humans have had since the enlightenment: individualism, rationalism, personal advancement, individual self-expression, competition with other humans, etc. But with technology taking us to the next level. Posthumanism tends to be used to cover a broader spectrum of attitudes, less focused on technology and also less committed to the view of human nature and human success that we have inherited from humanism. Posthuman philosophies look at our animality, for instance. They engage with the subjectivity of other living creatures, and the limitations of individualistic philosophies. They tend to see us as existing in relation with the other life on earth, as opposed to above it and in charge of it. Both ecology and technology tend to be addressed together by posthumanists, and there is less focus on the traditional story of human life being an individual's journey. To me posthumanism seems to be the more holistic and realistic way of thinking about our future. I'll return to this in the last section of this lesson.
The idea that humanity as we have come to think of it will continue to evolve and eventually transform into something we need a new name for goes back at least to the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose fictionalized prophet Zarathustra wanted to remind the people of his day that they were not at the end point of evolution or history:
I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment...
[...]
Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss...
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under... (Nietzsche, section "Zarathustra's Prologue")
For Nietzsche, human beings are a stage on the road to something "greater." Posthumanists would agree that we are evolving and will need to see ourselves differently. Transhumanists have embraced the romanticist and humanist idea of Nietzche's Ubermensch (superhuman) with the added assumption that it is technology itslef that will take us to the next level.
The transhumanist movement is sometimes abbreviated to h+. Humanity plus. There are many strains, some of them focused primarily on improvement at the individual level (egotistical application of technology to make a more beautiful body or a smarter brain or faster legs, for example) and others thinking in broader humanist terms (the end of poverty, disability, and so forth). Different advocates emphasize mechanical technology, bioengineering, merging with machine consciousness, merging of our meat consciousnesses through networking technology (hive mind), or the promotion of other animal species or machines to human sorts of consciousness as key aspects of the transhumanist push.
Posthumanists question the primacy of traditional humanist values, and some of them think think that something less "human" would actually be more sane and humane. They acknowledge that technology can play a role, but don't think we should evolve more technologically without also evolving more in terms of wisdom and compassion.
The influential zoologist and anthropologist Konrad Lorenz once made the witty suggestion that current humanity is actually the "Missing Link" between animals and humans in the sense we like to think of ourselves when feeling gung ho about the species - we're haven't really managed to become quite human yet. It's not always clear when we will be able to say we are not animals any more, but something else, if ever. Many see transhumanism also as an intermediary evolutionary state - between humanity and a form of being that is truly posthuman. The madcap philosopher Slavoj Žižek unpacked the remark made by Konrad Lorenz in terms of two 19th century views of the current backwardness of humanity: Nietzsche's, quoted above, and that of Karl Marx, who felt that until humanity transcended the barbarity of its hierarchical societies of haves and have-nots we could not really consider ourselves to be more than "prehistoric" human beings:
the first association that imposes itself here is the notion that the "actually existing" humanity still dwells in what Marx designated as "pre-history," and that the true human history will begin with the advent of the Communist society; or, in Nietzsche's terms, that man is just a bridge, a passage between animal and overman. What Lorenz "meant" was undoubtedly situated along these lines, although with a more humanistic twist: humanity is still immature and barbarian, it did not yet reach the full wisdom. However, an opposite reading also imposes itself: the human being IS in its very essence a "passage," the finite opens into an abyss. (Žižek n.d.)
When would be able to say that we are truly human? Or will we always be "transhuman," on the road to true humanity? Humanity is a moving target, an evolution without end (except perhaps extinction). When would we become a new species - or a non-species, a group of beings beyond animal speciation? Posthumanity has often been identified with a state we will be able to attain once we arrive at the "Technological Singularity".