Post and Trans Humanism

- Are we choosing to be changed by technology - or is technology changing us?

- How do these two branches critically compare and contrast different (and their)

innovations.

- Posthumanism and Transhumanism are 2 fundamentally different (and opposing?)

ways to think about technology.

- How different motivations and epistemologies provoke materially differing

innovations?

How transhumanism and posthumanism provoke materially differing innovations?

Ex-Machina | © Universal Pictures

The innovation movement under humanism has a great effect on the survival and development of human beings. For example, the industrial revolution, the electrical revolution, the advent of computer technology. Defining substantial innovation requires us to define the scope and depth of its creation. Whereas range arises from human goals or motivations, depth change is influenced by epistemology. When the New Concept of Man annotation appears, the new epistemology portrays another form of human creativity. Transhumanism has been defined as "the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through the application of reason, especially by using technology to eliminate aging and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities" (Bostrum, 1999). The prevailing view of post-humanism is that human beings will cease to be human, because technology has changed them so much that they no longer represent human beings. A central belief of this worldview is that human beings in their current form do not represent the end of our development, but the beginning of humanity (Bostrum, 1999). That is to say, in discussing the expansion of human identity, the creative thinking represented by transumanist and post-humanist theories has foreseen the dramatic changes that technology will bring to future human beings.

We are in an intelligent age, and the pace of technological innovation is accelerating. When the human mind and physiology are greatly modified, our lives will face a full range of new challenges. So before embarking on radical reform, rethinking our personal development patterns is not bad for us, it can even change the status quo. Of course, it takes a lot of methodological creativity to turn a challenge into an appropriate opportunity. Methodology's performance in art, biology, environment, society and other research fields is worth looking forward to.

Transhumanism advocates the exploitation and manufacture of human conditions through advanced technology. About the relationship between natural design and function of the human body is reflected in Viktoria Modesta's artistic work, She is a Bionic Pop Artist, which is dedicated to a futuristic approach to the body as an artistic concept. In the design of pop music, she chooses to combine with other disciplines to create innovative experiences on a larger scale. Her work Forget What You Know About Disability breaks the stereotype we have about disability. "Creativity allows us to solve problems from a malleable perspective, open our minds and reimagine the world we live in in art," Viktoria said. I think the motivation for this view stems from her belief that technology can enhance human physiology and alter human vulnerability. While some question whether dramatic changes in the body will help improve our lives, transhumanists tell us that getting rid of innovation across biological boundaries requires an inclusive understanding of 'human identity'. For example, in the technology of correcting myopia, the use of glasses or contact lenses to correct vision is only to enhance the physical condition of humans through rehabilitation interventions, but this maintains a state that can be separated from the human body. When there are technologies such as the implantation of chips into the brain or the transformation of the nervous system for permanent enhancement, humans have drawn a line here. Therefore, disruptive technological innovations are difficult to understand personal fears before updating the ‘person’s identity’. Hawking emphasized that self-design or mechanical enhancement of the human genome to enhance human intelligence can reduce aggression, which is an important stage of evolutionary dissemination of information. Therefore, mankind still needs to carry out fundamental technological innovation under the guidance of different methodologies.

Post-humanism seems to be more distant from modern society. Although it and hyper-humanism both discuss the impact of technological change on human evolution, post-humanism has different views on the rational state after the realization of technology. "The emergence of super artificial intelligence will be the last invention of human beings (Bostrom,2003)." Philosopher Nick Land believes that "humans should embrace and accept their eventual appearance. In contrast to the transhumanist concept of keeping 'people first' as the centre of the world, post-humanism rejects the idea that humans are unique creatures. So what happens to the idea of innovation in the symbiosis of everything? Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet describes attempts to survive beyond humans. In one scenario, artificial radioactive cesium extends human senses to other living things, moves through water and soil, and can enter the insides of plants and animals. In the case of a unified living environment, we find a way to co-exist, through the sustenance of the soul to find a suitable place to live. Perhaps this imagined scenario is not enough to justify the disruptive innovation that Posthumanism has unleashed. In Post Human Rosi Braidotti Posthuman Knowledge, it is mentioned that under the mode of alternative humanism, the establishment of a database of personal biological heredity, nerve, and media information has become the pursuit of neo-liberal market forces. This may say something about the informational power of life itself. In the process of profit, the specimens of plants, animals and bacteria, as well as human specimens, conform to the logic of never-ending consumption. The contextualization of posthumanism shows that the application of new technology will be rationalized very quickly. So Posthumanism

seems a little closer to us.

How to upgrade technology and better adapt to technological innovation through the transformation of personal thinking is what we need to learn from Transhumanism and Posthumanism. When our cognition is challenged or the basic rules of society are completely changed, our creativity will provide us with appropriate values.

Reference

Viktoria Modesta：Interview with VM at MIT residency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1CG2XpkBis&

Post Human Rosi Braidotti Posthuman Knowledge https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/eerj.2013.12.1.1

"Transhumanism and Posthumanism ." Encyclopedia of Bioethics. https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/transhumanism-and-posthumanism

Schneider, S. (2009). Future minds: Transhumanism, cognitive enhancement, and the nature of persons. In V. Ravitsky, The Penn Center Guide to Bioethics.

Nayar, PK 2013, Posthumanism, Polity Press, Oxford.