As a fan of technology, science, and all kinds of developments that make human life better and/or longer, I am deeply interested in the idea of transhumanism (or H+, i.e. Human+). In this introduction I will share thoughts that will bring you up to speed on the H+ topic. As a fun fact, this is a reworking of a text from 2016 — I overshot by a few years there, but for the curious, you’re welcome to have a look.
Transhumanism in practice — what’s in it for me?
Imagine that due to an unfortunate accident you lose your hand or even your entire arm. Current prosthetics would not provide you with comfort, dexterity, or even sensation in your fingers. Modern medicine in most cases is limited to fitting a stump that sometimes looks realistic — at least until you try to do something with it.
Welcome to H+, where your prosthetic will be connected directly to your nervous system. The device will have precise rotary mechanisms that can effortlessly execute every smallest movement. A limb manufactured specifically for you will be perfectly tailored to your body, comfortable, capable of feeling, and will even provide greater strength than our “standard” natural model.
In a nutshell, the idea of transhumanism is about merging humans with machines. It is the next step in evolution — one controlled by humanity rather than nature. It also means that humankind has an ever-greater chance of becoming like our mythical divine archetype: powerful, infinitely intelligent, and practically immortal. Perhaps, however, along the way we will cease to be human.
Are we dreaming of flying cars again, straight out of The Jetsons?
In the 1960s, when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, some visionaries imagined the magical year 2000. Our cities were supposed to touch the clouds, with cars flying between pointed towers, sometimes even driven by robots. When you reach the Moon with a computer a sixteenth as powerful as your washing machine, you are entitled to some far-reaching visions. Fantasy had been going in a similar direction even earlier. Either way, none of us own a flying car, and the smartest robot we can find at home is capable of vacuuming the floor without falling down the stairs.
So why does writing about bionic limbs and transforming into demi-gods have any basis in reality?
It may seem improbable, but we already have major successes in this field. What is somewhat surprising is the absence of these technologies in pop culture — cyborgs and implants have, for some reason, never won over the mainstream. In the world beyond Hollywood, however, we have living examples: from Elon Musk and his Neuralink, to assisting the blind, to Open Bionics and Tilly. I could show many more examples of this kind, especially from recent years. As you can see — the future has already arrived, in fact it arrived yesterday. Combining even three of the links above paints a picture of an entirely new generation of human. A brain supported by processors in an enhanced body — eyes that see everything, limbs capable of far more than their natural counterparts. Add to that the ever-improving AI algorithms that are beginning to understand humans ever more deeply and you have a truly fascinating — and explosive — mixture.
The mixture may prove explosive because it means revolution. On one hand we have people like Hugh Herr, speaking about the advantages of bionic limbs, and on the other Blake Leeper, who was disqualified from Tokyo 2020 because his prosthetic legs gave him a significant advantage over his “able-bodied” competitors. The advancement of H+ technology is also a push forward for industries that have long relied heavily on human labor — such as manufacturing, where it is predicted that by 2025 alone, 85 million people will lose their jobs.
What might this mean for me?
H+ is not a fairy tale, nor even a distant song of the future. The technology is not yet ready for a conversation about implants for everyone, but within a few years we will be flooded with news about “miracles of medicine and technology.” People who have suffered serious accidents, war veterans, manual laborers, and even retirees will get a second chance. I suspect that the Paralympics will stop being the “lesser sibling” of the Olympics. It will be precisely those competitions that draw the largest crowds — imagine athletes who are already capable of moving metaphorical mountains in their current state, and who will receive enhancements that make them far faster, stronger, more agile, and sharper than their fully natural counterparts. That is the bright side of the coin. It is not hard to imagine a war in which soldiers are also far more powerful, and after sustaining severe injuries simply receive new parts and are sent back to the front.