[ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

I always had some doubts on "transhumanism" as a marketing buzzword,
but I like "posthumanism" even less. The term implies a rejection of
our humanity and a desire to become something else.

What we want to become is clear to us: we want to remain more or less
ourselves but move to much better bodies and much smarter minds. But
for our opponents it is easy to construct "posthuman" as eliminating
tender and loving humans and replacing them with cold and heartless
machines.

If and when I will be a computational superintelligence roaming the
galactic web, I will still be a human in better shape and with some
more toys to play with.

G.

On 5/5/07, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> At 04:43 PM 5/5/2007 +0100, ben zaiboc wrote:
>
> >Oh, i just thought of another one:
> >3) It's just a game. To these people, 'posthuman' is like 'postmodern'.
> >the last thing they want is to think it actually means something real.
>
> My guess is that this is closest to the real dynamic. "Post-" has
> been the cool prefix for more than 30 years. Postmodern,
> poststructural, postfeminist... (Although the latter has a negative
> flavor in the academy.) As one of those who quite early adopted
> "transhuman" from Sir Julian Huxley, I find it interesting on
> reflection that I'm also a theorist of "transrealism," an extension
> of Rudy Rucker's approach to imaginative writing. (It's true that
> before I published an academic book about transrealism, I also did
> one on postmodern science fiction and an encyclopaedia entry on that
> topic, so I don't wish to give the impression that they're mutually
> exclusive.) I suspect if European philosophes had adopted
> "transmodern" as their sexy word, Hayles and the others in that club
> would now be happily discussing "transhumans" rather than "posthumans".
>
> Damien Broderick
>
>
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