Though there’s been a continuous call for people to hold on to their humanity to keep the uniqueness of the human individualism that is diminishing in the era of the machine and technology. There has been some ideologies that were more concerned about the extended evolution of humanity and whether human beings existence should be the main concern of the future or not?
The trans-humanism ideology promotes taming technology in order to enhance and elongate the human life, though genetic engineering, neuroscience, nanotechnology…etc. (ÇAVUŞ 2021)For instance curing lifelong diseases, performing transplant surgeries…etc.
I think the idea of using technology to find cures for lifelong diseases is essential actually. However I believe that putting limitations to biotech will help save humans at some point from the blurriness of the line between man and machine/technology or man and animals. In fact the fusion of man and machine has started to trigger the notion of immortality for some people.Which introduces the questions of what’s normal? What’s ethical? And who can or should access this technology if it ever existed?
One thing that portrays that perfectly is the movie “Transcendence” which shows how after a scientist death his brain was transformed into an artificial intelligence system then into another human body and how that transcendence between medias/bodies had catastrophic results (Paglen 2014). Because it created a confusion of what is real? What is artificial? And what’s life-like? At the end of the movie we can see that life-like is not enough because nothing can replace the human beings and their souls basically. I believe that unsupervised technologies can destroy humanity and mess with people’s brains and perceptions.
The movie also tackles another issue which is the accessibility of such tech. It was in the hands of a famous wealthy scientist who can afford that does that mean that the notion of trans-humanism and using technology to advance the human lives will be limited to a few?
Also the transcendence between animal and man in the medical field has been going on for years and it did save a lot of people for instance animal bones and tissues can substitute some of the human ones in major surgeries. However, what if it exceeded the few bones and tissues what if brain cells were involved and what if the brain cells were transplanted from humans to animals? I feel like we will see an age of chimeras and hybrid creatures were we will reach a point when we are no longer sure if we are talking to human beings or something else!!!!
On the other hand, we have the post humanism philosophy which declines the superiority of the humans as species and neglects the importance of one’s identity as we know it. (ÇAVUŞ 2021) I think that it is an extremely destructive ideology and I feel like it’s stripping people from their identities because it advocate the idea of a “cyborg”, which is a digital creature that has no race, no gender, no sexuality, no skin color, nothing I feel like this concept can have a positive impact on solving discrimination and bias issues and provide equalities but at a higher cost which is the human entity as we know it.
For me I feel that the future is a scary place that will get scarier with minimalizing the humanitarian features and characteristics.
References
ÇAVUŞ, Cennet Ceren. 2021. “Transhumanism, Posthumanism, and the ‘Cyborg Identity.’” Fe Dergi Feminist Ele 13 (1): 177–87. https://doi.org/10.46655/federgi.947009
Nasrullah Mambrol. 2018. “Posthumanist Criticism.” Literary Theory and Criticism. July 25, 2018. https://literariness.org/2018/07/25/posthumanist-criticism/
Paglen, Jack. 2014. “Transcendence.” IMDb. April 17, 2014. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2209764/
