What is Transhumanism?

[Sandi]

On the introductions thread, Phil said he was blogging about transhumanism and Sue said that she was thinking about the subject a lot. What exactly is transhumanism? I think I can guess, but I've really never heard the term before.

What books have good examples of transhumanism?

[Alex]

That's a good question, and I'll try to answer it without resorting to Wikipedia. The basic idea is that one day, humanity will evolve to a post-human state, similar to the way modern humans are post-Homo erectus. Except now we have technology, so the change will happen much faster than in the past and perhaps be much more dramatic. Transhumanism is a philosophy and a movement that this evolution is good and that we should encourage it and work towards a post-human state.

That's my summary, anyway. I'm not expert, and I'm interested in hearing others' definitions.

Also, "transhuman" and "posthuman" get used pretty interchangeably. I generally see "transhuman" a lot more, I think because it represents more of the transition from now to a posthuman state, whereas posthuman seems to be more of an endpoint. But again, I'm no expert.

As for books, I mentioned Accelerando and Rainbow's End in the introductions thread. Iain M. Banks' Culture series features a posthuman society (as I understand it, I haven't read any of those books yet). I would also argue that Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon has a lot of transhuman concepts in it, like digitized personas and body switching, without being explicitly transhuman fiction.

[Sandi]

Hmm. I think I see what you're saying. Quite a few of Ian McDonald's books would would fit into that category. "Thirteen" by Richard Morgan might fit pretty well. The Ousters in Dan Simmons' "Rise of Endymion" would definitely qualify as posthuman.

[Cairnraiser]

Though sometimes used interchangably, I'd say that thranshumanism indicates a deliberate modification of the human condition such as Frederick Pohl's Man Plus while posthumanism to some degree denotes the natural evolution of what it means to be human, such as mutants from the Marvel universe.

[[deleted user]]

I think "deliberate modification of the human body" might be more accurate. Transhumans are actively changing parts of their body to prepare for the Singularity and the posthuman condition.

Theoretically we can not know what the posthuman condition will be but people are making predictions. Any book that incorporates digital and downloadable human brains (minds) is predicting the posthuman condition. Many people feel that the day the human mind can be downloaded, stored, and uploaded to a new substrate will be the day we have reached the Singularity. So transhumans are humans that are preparing for the posthuman condition. They are doing to their bodies whatever it takes to make it to the Singularity and then survive it.

For instance, Ray Kurzweill has weekly blood transfusions. If I remember correctly, he swaps out his entire blood load for fresh blood in an effort to stem off death. He does a lot of other things as well in order to live long enough to make it to the time when humans will all have the capacity for eternal life. He feels eternal life will be part of the posthuman condition.