From: Emmanuel Charpentier (manu@cybercable.fr)
Date: Sat Oct 24 1998 - 13:21:49 MDT
Dan Clemmensen wrote:
>
> Kathryn Aegis wrote:
> > By the year 3000, it goes almost without saying that most humans will
> > have the means and opportunity to evolve to the transhuman stage. My
> > question--will we have seen the first posthuman(s) by then? How many?
> > In what form?
>
> You might want to send your brief definition of posthuman, just to make
> sure we're all answering the same question:-)
>
> There is a strong possibility that humans will be able to use technology to
> augment themselves, while still remaining essentially human, thus evolving to
> the transhuman stage. Different futurists make different estimates of when
> this will happen, with radical, moderate, and conservative estimates of
> ten, thirty, and a hundred years, respectively, while mystics claim that
> it can never happen.
>
> Given transhumanity, how long will it take for posthumanity to appear?
> If we define a posthuman as a superintelligent entity whose capabilities
> and motivations are no longer comprehensible to humans, I feel that
> posthumanity will follow immediately from transhumanity via a
> rapid-feedback process.
>
> How many and in what form? One, in whatever form it wants. It will
> have the means to optimize the organization of all the matter in the
> solar system, and the intelligence to decide on its own definition of
> "optimum." There is no way to know if our current understanding of
> computing architectures or of the organization of human consciousness
> is relevant, but if so the posthuman may organize itself as a collection
> of quasi-autonomous sub-entities.
>
> Will the posthuman have completed its reorganizaton of solar matter
> by the year 3000? I don't know. This will depend on the laws of
> thermodynamics and whether or not the posthuman is willing to expend
> mass and energy to rapidly cool the Sun down to a useful temperature.
Here is my try at a prediction, which is also something of a political
view...
We will have more and more means of (re)defining what we are.
Culturally or technically. The laws of evolution are still acting, only
there is no more of a harsh physical selection: genetic phreaks can
survive, and in the near future will live. As time pass by, we could
probably modify ourserlf so much that actual humans could only talk
about monsters. Ie: small person, with air filled bones and wings...
(demon or angel wings, you choose); social humans, big bulky humans,
machinic humans, whatever can be done.
But still, allways, human. It's just an identification after all,
many groups use it to identify themselves, and finally, to become
inhuman or anhuman might be an impossible task.
One thing, a philosoph (possibly technophob) with which I had
vaguely stated this idea dismissed it with one argument: -who- will
choose what we will become? Simple: the individual itself.
Although there might be loads of troubles, past choices of an
individual, for exemple, might reduce its future possibilities. And I
got to think about problems with our mind, our memories, our neural
net...
Manu.
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