Walking miles and miles to get to school is a common conversation between my generation’s parents and us, who have access to vehicles at all times. We have come a long way in our development, from penning letters to our loved ones to video calling. Due to the rapid advancement of science and technology, we have seen tremendous changes in our lifestyle and surroundings over the previous decade.
We, the human race, have progressed from our forefathers by continuing to improve our brains. In comparison to animals, we have a more complicated existence. Even still, we are living beings with many limits. We are bound by the reality of birth and death. Death limits our capability to explore ourselves. We now have methods for curing numerous diseases and problems, which have increased human lifetime from 47.3 to 78.7 years in 110 years. According to studies, it will continue to rise in the future. Similarly, we have some physical and mental boundaries. Aging is one of them. It is a natural process in which physical and psychological changes occur in any living organism. Some organs become less efficient or stop working altogether. It could also cause memory loss. Another constraint we confront is our physical well-being. Any component of our body can get ill at any time during our lives. Our restrictions are always human organ malfunction, illness attack, and so on. Other limits for human life include being insensitive to IR rays, X-rays, Gamma radiation, thinking in five dimensions, being uninhabitable on other planets, and so on.
We live in a world where all of these restrictions exist, but where people are actively thinking about and experimenting with ways to turn them into possibilities. Living beings’ existence on Earth may become harder in the near future due to a variety of evident factors such as pollution, scarcity of resources, and so on. If these conditions worsen, the continuation of human life will be in doubt. Other living organisms, in addition to people, are affected, which has an impact on us. Growing science and technology has already devised a solution to these issues, resulting in the emergence of advanced human beings. Transhumanism is based on this concept.
Some transhumanist ideals are depicted in science fiction and superhero movies. People get inspired and come up with such ideas as a result of reading fictitious stories. Scientists in today’s culture are investing their minds and efforts into making this fiction a reality, with numerous Iron Men and Caption America in the future generation.
We now have some technological advancements, such as organ transplantation, which has some adverse effects. In the notion of transhumanism, where humans blend with machines, posthumanism emerges as cyborgs or cybernetics with expanded powers and lifestyles having both technological and biological units. Singularity is what we’re looking for in the future. Singularity is the point at which mankind and machine come together, with artificial intelligence as the guide.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will be the way of the future. AI systems will be intelligent enough to acquire information and comprehend the cosmos in a way that humans cannot. We shall get smarter and fitter as a result of the improved form of humans with enhanced intelligence and IQ. It will be amazing to upload our brains into computers and save thoughts and memories indefinitely. The bodies and minds of intelligent humans will function like a machine. Super-intelligence, super-longevity, and super-wellbeing are the three main motivations for this concept.
We are all too familiar with technological improvements in the macroscopic world. Nanotechnology, meanwhile, has pushed the world toward microscopic and nanoscopic technical advancements. To incorporate equipment into a biological system while overcoming all of the body’s defence mechanisms, biocompatible materials that can withstand such conditions must be chosen. One of them is nanoscale drugs. Artificially manufactured macroscopic and microscopic human organs are being studied. Such bionics have the potential to generate superhumans with a wide range of benefits. When neurons connect with body parts via tiny robots, paralysis can be treated. Non-destructive and biocompatible micro or nano robots can be introduced into the body. Another option is to attach high-resolution microscopy to the human eye via external software, which would be a cutting-edge research facility. It will be a significant triumph for science and technology if research instruments can be shrunk and integrated with the human body. Miniaturization and the creation of biocompatible materials that do not trigger the body’s defensive mechanisms are required for all of these technologies to progress. For the functionalization of such systems, researchers are concentrating their efforts on developing non-neural links that connect brains to computers.
Fig. 1: Evolution to transhuman
Aubrey De Grey, a transhumanist, founded the SENS Foundation with the goal of eradicating ageing and age-related disorders. Kevin Warwick is a scientist who had 100 electrodes inserted in his nervous system and linked them to a computer. He has ultrasonic senses and was able to manipulate a robot from another country. He was able to perceive sensations as electrical impulses in his brain. Similarly, his wife had electrodes inserted in her hand, allowing them to detect the folding of their partner’s hand as a pulse. That is an electronic communication experiment using the nervous system. In his works The Age of Intelligent Technology, The Singularity Is Near: When People Transcend Biology, and others, computer scientist Raymond Kurzweil explores the blending of humans and machines. The World Transhumanist Association, founded in 1998 by philosophers David Pearce and Nick Bostrom, strives to build enhanced humans through technology advancement in an ethical manner.
There will be considerable scepticism and debate, as with any new field. Because they want to halt ageing and death, they’re erasing the original human life. People regard this as the end of human civilisation and the beginning of the machine era from an ethical standpoint. And those who can afford it will be treated as superheroes, potentially creating a social imbalance. There is also the possibility that if humans exist at that time, he will be treated as a servant or a pet. There will be a massive population growth that the earth may not be able to cope with. As a result, we may need to build posthumans capable of surviving on other worlds while also expanding our ecology.
We evolved naturally through millions of years from single-celled species to multicellular organisms, and then from Homo habilis to Homo sapiens 2.8 million years ago. Because science and technology will continue manually perfecting human evolution after the human era, evolution after the human era will be fairly quick. In the future, we may be able to programme and create our bodies and minds to meet our own needs. We may be able to control other individuals over the computer network, similar to how we can control other people in games. With the help of the AI system, changes in the world will happen very quickly. Even if some people argue that transhumanism has negative consequences, it is necessary for development. Not only should advancements in science and technology be reflected in research, but they should also be reflected in lifestyle.
Athira Chandran M
Junior Research Fellow
Group of Dr. Ashutosh K. Singh
CeNS Bangalore