Naomi: I'm your host, Naomi Murf. Welcome to 523's Mobile Feast on transhumanity. This series has three parts. First, we delve into the ideas informing the transhumanistic movement. Beliefs that make our humanness a transhuman variable with the potential to be. In the second part, transhumans step into the educational sphere. And finally, is the trend to integrated circuit chips in the brain the mother of all rabbit holes?

Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel. As all of you sci-fi fans know, the transhuman trope is a staple in science fiction.

Naomi: In films like the Matrix, awakened freedom fighters battle artificially intelligent human-like robots, who harvest the energy of the enslaved humans caught in their web of altered reality.

Rachel: And I just love the Netflix series, Altered Carbon. It's a future where the wealthy buy emptied-out bodies so that they can transfer their updated consciousness into them.  
                 
Naomi: Sounds like a dystopian future.  

Rachel: It's just entertainment!

Naomi: Now, what's transhumanity? Let's look at the word.

The prefix, 'trans,' means to move beyond; the root, 'human,' represents an earthly being as opposed to gods and the suffix 'ity' refers to having the quality of trans-human.  

Rachel: In other words, humanity is having the quality of being human. So we can say, trans-humanity stands for going beyond being human.

Naomi: That's right! There's a loose transhumanist movement of interconnected and interdisciplinary people working to optimize human potential. The philosopher and futurist, Max More, describes transhumanism as a movement that seeks to continue and accelerate the evolution of intelligent life. It'll take humans beyond the current human biological form and limitations with science and technology. A transhuman is a subsequent stage in the human lineage. Interestingly, transhumanists refer to the biological human as 1.0.  

Humans become transhuman when they merge with technological innovations, such as silicon brain chips or titanium implants. This merge is the key. It unlocks and optimizes human potential. As a result, development is no longer restricted to education, culture, or evolution. Nonetheless, currently, the human brain's limited computational capacity slows progress.

Rachel: That's a relief, so not in my lifetime then.

Naomi: Yet, according to futurologist, Kurzweil, most people misjudge the pace of technology advancements and their exponential growth. He says this singularity is only a historical moment away. It has begun already, with the biological body being implanted with technology. Large-scale change starts slowly, but the depth of the impact of what follows will irreversibly transform human life.

As philosopher Svitlana Hanaba's team encourages, "let's stop for a moment and imagine the potential ramifications of our intellect becoming not only the producer but also a product of technology."

Indeed, transhumanists' ultimate goal is a post-human state where human 2.0 sheds mortality by uploading the mind to a non-biological substrate to defeat death.

It should not come as a surprise that those working in science, engineering, and technology trust that the rapid acceleration in these fields will positively change the mode of human life.

While not on the general public's radar, these emerging technologies have already started to leave the lab. An example is smart prostheses that provide real-time kinaesthetic feedback. One of the biomechatronic pioneers, Hugh Herr, regrets not having the same cyborg functions in his bionic legs. Additionally, Herr believes people will eventually sculpt their identity by designing their physical bodies, cognition, and emotional experiences.

Unlike scientific research, the self-defined Grinder Movement brings biohacking to the everyday.

 

Rachel: They're also known as the cult of the man-machines.

Naomi: Really! As you might recall, the cyborg artists Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas developed and modified their bodies with artificial sensory technology and also co-founded the Cyborg Foundation. The foundation website boldly proclaims to help people become cyborgs, to promote freedom of morphology and defend the rights of cyborgs and mutants.

 

Rachel: That's how their foundation labels them.

Naomi: Thanks for pointing that out. As a recap, transhumanists believe the breakthrough and convergence of nano-bio-info-cogno-technologies should be harnessed to control, shape, and ultimately beat the evolutionary roulette of homo sapiens. That being so, Hanaba believes humans now transition from a possibility to a project. It can be said that technological innovations are like a two-faced Janus, offering superhuman opportunities yet destroying the human essence.

So in that light, our humanness becomes a transhuman variable. How then will the learning experience change?

Rachel: Thanks for joining us. Please check out the other two parts of this series on the jolt to self and becoming an open source as our bodies are interconnected via the internet.