Technology is advancing, and computers are beginning to adopt human capabilities and functions. But what would happen if we improved the human body, not the technology? Replace the vision that is fading with a special camera, and the limbs that are getting weaker with an exoskeleton? It sounds like something unbelievable, but today these goals and possibilities are being translated by the transhumanist movement.
Transhumanism is a philosophical concept that has evolved into an international movement that supports the use of science and technology to improve the human body. This movement proposes using technological possibilities to combat aging, mortality and disease.
In a narrow sense, transhumanism encourages various body modifications made for one reason or another: replacing Alzheimer’s fading memory with a computer algorithm, digitizing memories, replacing injured or missing limbs with prosthetics, and so on. This movement demands that life-enhancing technologies be available for mass use and applied extensively.
The term “transhumanism” in its modern sense (i.e., “transcending human beings”) was first used by the English evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley (Aldous Huxley’s older brother) in 1927 in Religion Without Revelation. At the time of his writing, new technologies were penetrating medicine and there was a greater ability to influence the natural order of things. Contemporaries supported the idea that enhancing human abilities through technology could become the new religion for humanity, but the real boom happened in the ’60s, when the war was left behind, during which people saw a completely different use of the advances of science.
In the 60’s synergistically reinforced each other several phenomena at once: the development of technology, the active appearance of works in the genres of science fiction, the formation of cryonics, the study of human consciousness. So in 1957, Huxley returned to the idea of transhumanism, and it was picked up by scientists Robert Ettinger and Evan Cooper, who founded cryonics, and then by other futurists.
Transhumanism assumes that improving one’s capabilities is the right of any human being, not a replacement for failing organs in case of illness or age-related changes. Thus, a person with an implant to digitize memories, for example, or with a mechanical arm, an exoskeleton or a computer eye would not be an invalid, but a transhuman, a cyborg.