Transhumanism Technology

[Europa]

Hi,

 

Transhumanism is the science of augmenting the human body and brain through the use of science and technology. This field materialized I believe around 1985 and formed the first organization, the Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org/ around 1989 I believe.

 

Transhumanists seek to use things like cloning, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, cyborg technology, mind uploading, artificial intelligence, and similar radical methods to enhance the body and brain, the ultimate goal being to become immortal and super-intelligent, in effect to become gods, if you will. Mythological gods such as Zues and Ares were immortal and physically strong, but not super-intelligent; transhumanists seek to improve human intelligence as well, so that we are not just physically powerful like Zues, but also intellectually powerful.

 

Some concepts of Transhumanism:

 

The Singularity: the creation of a super-intelligence that keeps on rebuilding itself to becoming more and more intelligent, even at an exponential rate if possible. This entity would become so intellectually powerful that we humans could not conceive of the resulting product. Either humans will become the Singularity or we will create one out of artificial intelligence to serve humans.

 

Mind Uploading: The plan to copy our mind into a super-computer that is immune to decay and built to be upgradable. This is problematic though since uploading your brain may just create a clone of you, a twin, while the original person still remains in the original biological brain.

 

Cyborg technology: slowly replacing our body and brain parts with materials that not only enhances us, but are immune to decay so we thus live longer, even for ever if possible.

 

Genetic engineering: used to not only create super-zygotes for birth, but to actually alter our current existing bodies for the better, kind of like the recent movie Spider-Man and the older movie "The Nutty Professor" with Eddy Murphy in which the body completely changed to fit the new DNA inserted into the person's cells.

 

Cloning: used to clone high quality humans.

 

Stem cells: used to clone organs and body parts to replace damaged and dying parts on existing people.

 

Artificial Intelligence: Do you remember the character "Data" from Star Trek? He was superior to humans both physically and intellectually. Transhumanists don't believe life must remain organic, but rather re-built for the better, even if that means creating humans out of the same material and design as "Luetenant Data."

 

Eugenics: Selective breeding and the use of cloning and genetic engineering to improve the gene pool of a given population group. Eugenics is not supported by all Transhumanist organizations, such as the World Transhumanist Organization, but is supported by other ones, such as Transtopia.

 

The most non-eccentric Transhumanist organization is the World Transhumanist Association: http://www.transhumanism.org/ while the MOST eccentric organization (and my personal favorite) is Transtopia http://www.transtopia.org/ The rest of the Transhumanist organizations/websites lie in the middle of these two extremes and include the following:

 

http://www.extropy.org/

http://www.betterhumans.com/

http://www.kurzweilai.net/

http://www.nickbostrom.com/

http://www.aleph.se/Trans/

http://www.imminst.org/

http://www.alcor.org/

http://www.foresight.org/

http://www.cryonics.org/

http://www.minduploading.org/

http://www.singularitywatch.com/

http://www.lef.org/

http://www.humancloning.org/

http://www.plausiblefutures.com/

http://www.prometheism.net/

http://www.euvolution.com/

http://www.eugenics.net/

http://www.neoeugenics.com/

http://www.childrenofmillennium.org/

http://www.cosmotheism.net/

http://www.euvolution.com/euvolution/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/e-l/