If you had the opportunity to combine your current mind and body with technology that will give you superhuman abilities and allow you to live forever, would you go for it? This is the essence of such a movement as transhumanism.
Transhumanists look forward to the day when technology will allow humans to become so perfect that disease, weakness, poverty and war will be eradicated forever. They believe that merging with machines will enable us to become trillions of times smarter than we are today, and will also enable us to achieve immortality.
Many transhumanists are convinced that this world can be expected during this lifetime. They point to Moore's Law and the fact that technology is growing exponentially. As the curve of technology bends higher and higher, our world is increasingly turning into something completely unfamiliar to us. In just a few decades, transhumanists believe that extremely advanced life-extension technologies will enable them to become gods on earth.
The key moment most transhumanists look forward to is the so-called singularity. This is the point of no return when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and technology will develop according to the domino principle. At the same time, most transhumanists believe that biological intelligence will develop in parallel with non-biological intelligence, and humanity will become much smarter. During this transition, society will change dramatically.
After the emergence of a singularity, changes will begin in society; and these changes will almost completely change society as we know it. Experts believe that indefinite human life extension will quickly become the norm. Many scientists working in this field are especially interested in the issues of achieving immortality.
But for most people, the idea of achieving immortality in our shattered bodies sounds ridiculous. However, transhumanists take this seriously and have good reason to do so.
One way to achieve this goal is to store the human mind on a computer. If your entire consciousness can be downloaded to a computer, it can later be downloaded into some futuristic avatar or something.
At the same time, uploading consciousness is not the only way to prolong life in which transhumanists are interested. Other examples include the incorporation of nanorobots into our bodies and the elimination of disease through "genetic reprogramming."
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Other futurists and transhumanists are working towards extending lifespan through biological means like growing new organs from stem cells and replacing worn-out parts of our body with high-tech models. The third way can be put at the point of fusion of biology and natural science: by adding nanorobots to the bloodstream and the brain, and replacing individual cells with nanocomputers, which will slow down cell degeneration, and hence aging.
According to transhumanists, we will not only live longer, but our quality of life will also be higher in the future.
Robots have become an important part of our lives. The self-assembly ability and the emergence of nano-factories will make these machines readily available. By 2050, technology is believed to have reached an android that is exactly human-like.
Such robots, controlled by software, can become maids, cooks and butlers for humans. Nanorobots will scurry through our veins 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and monitor our state of health, warning in time of problems.
Sounds interesting, right? Where to get money for all this? If robots are so advanced, why would humans work? Or can we “pump” ourselves with technology to be able to compete with robotic workers?
In a recent article, Andrew Smart suggests that such "enhancements" may simply turn us into "better slaves":
“Could it be that we are pouring our innovative energy into raising our best slaves? If the digital elite wants to achieve the perfect alliance with machines, what will happen to the rest of us, who either cannot afford to become cyborgs or just want to enjoy life like an ordinary person? One person of the singularity will be able to replace a hundred workers, and robots will take over the rest of the jobs?"
In fact, robots are already replacing us here and there. This happens even in low-wage countries like China.
China's Hon Hai, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, said it intends to build a robot factory and replace 500,000 workers with robots over the next three years. However, transhumanists are not particularly worried about this. They insist that we will become so smart that we can easily find solutions to such social problems.
Yes, most transhumanists admit that there will be holes in the road to utopia, but it would also be foolish to "not take control of our own evolution." They believe that we can use science and technology to guide the direction of society, and that this will create a much better world than the one we have today. For example, here is the opinion of one of the participants in a conference on transhumanism:
“Transhumanism is a movement towards transcendence. This is not classical mysticism, but it seeks a temporary transcendence. This movement is evolution. What is reality? Reality is evolution. It is a movement from simple to complex; the crown of this is intelligence. Evolution strives for intelligence. We must have the will to develop. We have a moral responsibility for the growth of evolution. As we evolve, we expand our capabilities and act in harmony with the evolutionary process."
Sounds religious, fanatical and promising. After all, who wouldn't want to live in a utopia in which everything that is “wrong” with our planet would be corrected?
Transhumanism doesn't end there. The followers of this trend believe that in the end we will have such superhuman abilities and will use such radical technologies for extending life, that we will easily feel like gods.
One of the most famous transhumanists on Earth, Ray Kurzweil, takes 150 vitamin supplements every day in an attempt to prolong his life until better technologies are developed to prolong life. The futurist believes that evolution and technology inevitably move us towards the divine.
“Evolution is moving towards more complexity, more elegance, more knowledge, more intelligence, beauty, creativity, higher levels of attributes like love. In every monotheistic tradition, God is described by all these qualities without any restrictions: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, creation, love, and so on.
Of course, even the accelerated growth of evolution will never lead to an infinite level of perfection, but to exponential growth in this direction - quite. Evolution inexorably brings us closer to the concept of God, although it will never reach the ideal. We can see it as a release from the constraints of our own biology."
Transhumanist Mark Pesce goes even further to extremes. He openly states that transhumanism will allow us to "become gods":
“People die, planets die, even stars die. We all know that. And since we know this, we are looking for something more - the transcendence of transience, the transition to the perfect form. Escape. Stopping the wheel. We are looking for perfect knowledge and perfect will.
To become gods, take the universe in hand and turn it into the one we need - for our own pleasure. It will be on Earth, it will be in heaven. The inevitable result of unthinkable improbability, the arrows of evolution - transhumanism - is achieved by good deeds."