The question of what
makes us human is a constant question in life and philosophy. Ideas
such as humanism, to post-human and beyond give some answers to that
question. Laurie McNeil's concept of the cyborg continues this train
of thought, with people changing themselves to human/machine hybrid
through internet persona, changing the idea of humanity (McNeill
2012). However with the advent of transhumanist thought this could
become more literal in the near future, even now we enhance our
bodies through man made means, from simple glasses to more complex
medical devices such as pacemakers and prosthetic limbs. As
technology improves increased cybernation of humanity is almost
inevitable, perhaps even to the extent of removing functioning body
parts to replace them with cybernetic improvements, whether it is a
good thing or not.(Volk 2013)
This leads to many
questions:
Imagine with
geocaching(van Luyn 2015) if instead of using a phone or other mobile
device a simple mental command would put a filter over your own
vision, would it change the experience or merely enhance it?
The ubiquitous nature
of Facebook and other social media sites is already a part of our
culture Facebook users online persona's, at least in part, defined by the website itself and in a transhumanist world, the self could be almost entirely be subsumed into the community as a whole.
So if it was truly possible to access social media sites anywhere without
a device would it change their use?
When does someone stop
being human? Is it a function of our body, mind, memories or some
combination? Could an AI ever be human?
Changing they way you
view or access a narrative, it can change the way it is formed or
read. In a post human world texts are collectivity created, in a
transhuman world authorship can be even more indistinct, with
concepts like the Stand Alone Complex, an idea from the TV version of
Ghost in the Shell, coming to the forefront. Transhumanism, even more
than post-human thought, signals the death of the individual as
author and perhaps completely.
References
McNeill, L.(2012).
There Is No "I" in Network: Social Networking Sites and
Posthuman Auto/Biography. Biography 35(1), 65-82. University
of Hawai'i Press. Retrieved September 4, 2015, from Project MUSE
database.
van Luyn, A (2015)
BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narrative and the Making of Place, Week
6 slides (powerpoint) retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
Volk,
V(2013) Transhumanism, in the Context of Bionics and Cybernetics and
Posthumanism (and Some Other Stuff)
Retrieved from
https://fordhamcyberculture.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/transhumanism-in-the-context-of-bionics-and-cybernetics-and-posthumanism-and-some-other-stuff/
Image Reference
https://loftcinema.com/files/2014/12/ghost-in-the-shell-poster.jpg
http://spectrum.ieee.org/image/62421
If transhumanist is defined as the meeting of the technological and the natural worlds (McNeill, 2012), then the popularity of social media is a prime example of a transhumanist interaction, as you have mentioned above. Facebook is a transhumanist experience as it is primarily a communal network. If one were to interact with Facebook in a purely isolated fashion, it would be a completely different experience than the average user has. With the rise of smart phones and other mobile access to the Internet, social media—and Facebook especially—has become a near-essential part of contemporary life. I feel comfortable claiming that it would be difficult to carry on a modern social life without interacting with Facebook in some form or another: I know people who have made the decision not to create Facebook profiles, and it is often difficult to keep in contact or make plans with them.
ReplyDeleteREFERENCES
McNeill, L. (2012). There is no “I” in network: Social networking sites and posthuman auto/biography. Biography 35(1), 65-82. Retrieved From http://muse.jhu.edu/
The potential of technological enhancements to the human body are truly spectacular to imagine. I think, however, that such a future is still quite a wait yet; remember that, in the 90’s, we thought we would have hover boards.
ReplyDeleteWe don’t know for certain what the effects of new technology would be, particularly if the technology is used to augment the human body. Using the ‘mental command’ concept you mentioned, I would argue that such improvements would vary in impact from user to user. For some it may be beneficial, for others not so much.
There is a close connection between our real and virtual selves (Mcneil, 2012). If we were to augment our bodies to the extent that we would not require a handheld device I think our use of social media sites would remain the same but our experience of the world would change. What I mean is that the lines between real and virtual would blur.
References:
Mcneil, L. (2012). There is no "I" in network: Social networking sites and post-human. Biography, 35(1), pp. 65-82. doi: 10.1353/bio.2012.0009