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The Future of the Human Species (Part 2) Post Date: 03/05/2010 Emerging Technology Human Enhancement Author: Brent Waters, DPhil Part I If a number of pundits are correct, we have already taken some initial steps toward creating a posthuman future.[1] The goal of this project is nothing less than the perfection of the human species. Specifically, human performance will be enhanced and longevity extended through anticipated advances in pharmacology, biotechnology, and bionics. Drugs, for example, can lessen the need for sleep; genetic engineering will slow the aging process; artificial limbs will enhance strength and agility; and brain implants will enhance the speed of interacting with computers. The cyborg becomes the next stage of human evolution.[2] Some visionaries foresee a day when, with the aid of artificial intelligence and robotics, endless lives might be achieved. The underlying binary information constituting one?s personality would be uploaded into a computer and then downloaded into robotic bodies or virtual reality programs. With sufficient and reliable memory storage, the process could, in principle, be repeated indefinitely, thereby achieving virtual immortality.[3] In the posthuman future, humans become self-perfected artifacts by blurring, if not eliminating, the line separating the natural from the artificial.[4] The promise of the posthuman project is the creation of beings that live healthy, productive, and happy lives, and most importantly beings that live for very long time?perhaps forever. The ultimate promise is immortality. The accompanying peril, however, is that the cost is exorbitant. The price of perfecting humankind is its destruction, for in becoming posthuman humans cease being human. The peril of the posthuman project, in short, is that its optimism disguises an underlying death-wish for the human species. One might be tempted to object that any worry about this peril is misplaced. The peril presupposes a promise that is far from certain. Few, if any, of the requisite technological advances have yet been achieved, and the likelihood of dramatic breakthroughs any time soon is slim at best. A so-called posthuman future is based on science fiction, not science. Consequently, time should not be wasted worrying about a peril that might, but probably will never present itself. There are two reasons why this temptation should be resisted. First, even in the absence of the technical advances and breakthroughs that would be required, we nonetheless must come to terms with the extent to which technology is shaping the character and trajectories of contemporary life. As Martin Heidegger and others have observed, technology has become the ontology of our age; our mode of being in the world by mastering and reshaping it in an image of what we want the world to become.[5] In large part, humans now live, and move, and have their being within fabricated environments that