At What Cost Transhumanity?

		12-21 August
About Brain Tennis Brain Tennis Archive Search the Wired Archive for related topics Paulina Borsook Max More Extropy genes evolution		Immortality through cryopreservation. Uploading human consciousness into a computer. Genetic and neurological enhancements. These are goals of the Extropians, an organization of techno-optimists seeking to "push beyond the merely human stage of evolution." But if a rational use of technology and science can remove us from our biological platform and bring about - among other things - eternal life, would we lose in the process what it means to be human? Max More, president of the Extropy Institute and editor of Extropy, claims posthumanism is a good thing and not something to be afraid of. His writings include "On Becoming Posthuman" and "Extropian Principles," which herald biological and neurological augmentation. Paulina Borsook, who says she is "Wired's only regular feminist/humanist/Luddite/skeptic contributor," considers herself a "property dualist" - seeing the mind and body as two aspects of the same thing. She's also written for Suck, and Newsweek, and recently examined cyberlibertarianism in Mother Jones.

Max More "We will be able to program the construction of physical objects (including our bodies) just as we now do with software. The abolition of aging and most involuntary death will be one result. We have achieved two of the three alchemists' dreams: We have transmuted the elements and learned to fly. Immortality is next."

Paulina Borsook "Donna Harraway's cyborg manifesto suggests that being the encompassing- the-paradoxes, fuzzy-logic postmodern creature we should all want to be means embracing the part-human/ part-machine construct. But have we understood that well what it really means to be human? I don't think the human metaphor is exhausted yet."

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