[ExI] Transhuman

[Ben Zaiboc]

Charlie Stross <charlie.stross at gmail.com> wrote:

> Our sense of self-identity is emergent over time from our experience of our interaction with our surrounding environment (including other people), and these interactions are mediated through our existing bodies. (Not to mention other peoples' reactions to us being coloured by their perceptions of us, again based on external physical appearances). So it would be unsurprising to find that most people (in a society with cheap and easy body modification) would only consider physical adaptations that tend towards the social norm: more "beautiful", in convergence with a socially-approved vision of beauty.


Most people, at first, yes.

But spend any time in a virtual environment like Second Life and it won't be long before among the 'beautiful people', you see the dwarves, furries, daleks, dragons, spider-squids, floating eyes, etc., etc.  As time goes by, and people become accustomed to seeing these non-normal forms, more people will adopt them, and it won't be long before the range of 'normal' becomes very wide indeed.  I'd expect this to happen IRL too.  There will probably be a large number of mostly-human-looking people (although probably 'idealised' as in comic-book proportions, manga-ised faces, etc.), a smaller number of more extreme types, and a small number of really bizarre ones.  Much like fashion in clothes today.


Ben Zaiboc