[Paleopsych] Hedgehog: Langdon Winner: Are Humans Obsolete?
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Langdon Winner: Are Humans Obsolete?
The Hedgehog Review - Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-hh?specfile=/texts/english/modeng/journals/hh.o2w&act=text&offset=1499054&textreg=1&id=WinObso4-3
[This is the last of the articles from the Hedgehog Review.]
Langdon Winner is Professor of Political Science in the
Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute. His work focuses on the social and political implications
of modern technological change. His books include: Political
Artifacts: Design and the Quality of Public Life (forthcoming); The
Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High
Technology (1986); and Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control
as a Theme in Political Thought (1977).
In mainstream writings on science and society from the
seventeenth century to the end of the millennium, the beneficiary of
the growth of knowledge was perfectly clear. Humanity as a whole,
often referred to as "man," was bound to reap the benefits from the
advance of scientific research and its manifold practical
applications. Optimistic depictions of progress assumed that
eventually the growth of science, technology, and modern institutions
would benefit not only powerful elites, but the world's population
more broadly with improvements evident in health, nutrition, housing,
industrial production, transportation, education, and numerous other
areas.
Among the first to grasp the possibilities were Francis Bacon
and René Descartes, whose writings on the promise of the new science
included bold projections of the godsend that would flow from the
laboratories and workshops. Explaining why it was important to
overcome his modesty and publish his discoveries in physics, Descartes
comments, "I believed that I could not keep them concealed without
sinning grievously against the law by which we are bound to
promote...the general good of mankind." It is at last conceivable, he
argues, that "we might...render ourselves lords and possessors of
nature." [3]^1
It did not take long, however, for flaws in these hopeful
projections to gain the attention of social critics (Karl Marx most
prominent among them), who noted that, in practice, the march onward
and upward had benefited some groups more than others and left working
people in the dust. In later decades, criticisms that were initially
focused on divisions of social class were broadened to emphasize
varieties of discrimination associated with race, gender, and
ethnicity, ones as potent as social class in withholding the boon to
"ourselves" that Descartes and others had promised. But even as the
scope of criticism enlarged, most thinkers still assumed that the
proper beneficiary of progress was humanity as a whole, including
populations more diverse than early modernist visions had recognized.
To this day, in venues like the Human Development Reports published
each year by the United Nations, the dream is alive and well; it
remains possible, the U.N. staff insists, to direct the powers of
science and technology for the benefit of human beings everywhere,
including those who have enjoyed little of the bounty so far. [4]^2
In recent years the conventional understandings of progress have
been challenged yet again, not in this instance by intellectuals
concerned about inclusion and social justice, but by entrepreneurs who
have discovered a fine new heir to the accumulation of useful
knowledge. The writings of several prominent scientists, engineers,
and businessmen brashly proclaim that, at the end of the day, the
telos of science has nothing to do with serving human needs or
alleviating humanity's age-old afflictions. For contemporary
developments point to the emergence of a new beneficiary, one vastly
modified and improved as compared to its anthropoid ancestors. Yes,
human beings may pride themselves in thinking that their presence is
required both to generate and enjoy the benefits of scientific
advance, but this vain prejudice is false. According to the new
prophets of perfectibility, the true inheritor of the legacy of
science will be an entirely new creature, one variously named metaman,
post-human, superhuman, robot, or cyborg.
Prophets of Post-Humanism
Predictions that humanity will soon yield to successor species
are especially popular among those who spend a good amount of time in
corporate and university research laboratories where movement on the
cutting edge is the key to success. While most scientists and
technologists at work in biotechnology, artificial intelligence,
robotics, man/machine symbiosis, and similar fields are content with
modest descriptions of their work, each of these fields has recently
spawned self-proclaimed futurist visionaries touting far more exotic
accounts of what is at stake--vast, world-altering changes that loom
just ahead. Colorful enough to be attractive to the mass media,
champions of post-humanism have emerged as leading publicists for
their scientific fields, appearing on best seller lists, as well as
television and radio talk shows, to herald an era of astonishing
transformations.
While the claims of post-humanist futurism are always pitched as
unprecedented, sensational forecasts, the rhetorical form of such
messages has assumed a highly predictable pattern. The writer
enthusiastically proclaims that the growth of knowledge in a
cutting-edge research field is proceeding at a dizzying pace. He/she
presents a barrage of colorful illustrations that highlight recent
breakthroughs, hinting at even more impressive ones in the works.
Although news from the laboratory may seem scattered and difficult to
fathom, there are, the writer explains, discernible long-term trends
emerging. The trajectory of development points to revolutionary
outcomes, foremost of which will be substantial modifications of human
beings as we know them, culminating in the fabrication of one or more
new creatures superior to humans in important respects. The proponent
insists that developments depicted are inevitable, foreshadowed in
close connections between technology and human biology that have
already made us "hybrid" or "composite" beings; any thought of
returning to an original or "natural" condition is, therefore, simply
unrealistic, for the crucial boundaries have already been crossed.
Those who try to resist these earth-shaking developments are simply
out of touch or, worse, benighted Luddites who resist technological
change of any sort. Nevertheless, the post-humanist assures us, there
is still need for ethical reflection upon the events unfolding. For
although these transformations will necessarily occur, we should think
carefully about what it all means and how we can gracefully adapt to
these changes in the years to come.
Typical of this way of arguing is Gregory Stock's Metaman: The
Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism. With a PhD
in biophysics from Johns Hopkins and an MBA from Harvard, Stock is
prepared to map both the scientific and commercial possibilities at
stake in re-engineering the species:
Both society and the natural environment have previously undergone
tumultuous changes, but the essence of being human has remained the
same. Metaman, however, is on the verge of significantly altering
human form and capacity
As the nature of human beings begins to change, so too will
concepts of what it means to be human. One day humans will be
composite beings: part biological, part mechanical, part electronic
By applying biological techniques to embryos and then to the
reproductive process itself, Metaman will take control of human
evolution
No one can know what humans will one day become, but whether it is
a matter of fifty years or five hundred years, humans will
eventually undergo radical biological change. [5]^3
As Director of the Center for the Study of Evolution and the
Origin of Life at UCLA, Stock explores the changes he believes the
future holds in store, including the conquest of aging. "The human
species," he writes, "is moving out of its childhood. It is time for
us to acknowledge our growing powers and begin to take responsibility
for them. We have little choice in this, for we have begun to play god
in so many of life's intimate realms that we probably could not turn
back if we tried." [6]^4 Yet Stock believes that ethical reasoning
must still play a role. In particular, the present generation must
recognize its "responsibility," a positive commitment that accepts the
"inevitability" of Metaman and actively exploits every opportunity to
use genetic engineering to move the human organism beyond what Stock
depicts as its present decrepit condition. While he recognizes that
such developments will generate "stresses within society," he argues
that moral deliberation and decisions about public policy are
irrelevant: "But whether such changes are `wise' or `desirable' misses
the essential point that they are largely not a matter of choice; they
are the unavoidable product of the technological advance intrinsic to
Metaman." [7]^5
Similar enthusiasm for the abolition of old-fashioned human
beings informs the writings of Lee Silver, professor of molecular
biology at Princeton. His book Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a
Brave New World surveys near and distant prospects for the clever
management of human reproduction. In his view, developments already
visible in scientific laboratories will produce a revolution in
society, an upheaval whose results include a radical division of the
species into superior and inferior genetic classes. Contemplating the
situation he believes will prevail in the U.S.A. in code 2350 /code
c.e., he writes:
The GenRich--who account for code 10 /code percent of the American
population--all carry synthetic genes.... The GenRich are a modern
day hereditary class of genetic aristocrats.
All aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment industry,
and the knowledge industry are controlled by members of the GenRich
class.... In contrast, Naturals work as low-paid service providers
or as laborers. [8]^6
Silver speculates that by the end of the third millennium, the
two groups will have become "entirely separate species with no ability
to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a
current human would have for a chimpanzee." [9]^7 For those who think
his vision of the future resembles a bizarre science fiction
screenplay, Silver answers that, in fact, his scenario "is based on
straightforward extrapolations from our current knowledge base."
[10]^8 It is "inevitable" that the use of reprogenetic technologies
will change the species in fundamental ways. In Silver's view, parents
who have the financial resources to pass on "enhanced genes" to their
offspring will jump at the chance to do so and resist any attempts to
restrict the practice. "Evolution--the old-fashioned way, through
natural selection--will stop because people will choose which genes to
add to their children." [11]^9
The speculations of Stock and Silver, rooted in biotechnology
and the biomedical sciences, are matched in exuberance by visionaries
in computer science and robotics who predict the eventual replacement
of the human being by ingenious feats of engineering. One of the more
colorful exponents of this position is Ray Kurzweil, an information
scientist known for several major breakthroughs--the development,
according to his web page, of "the first print-to-speech reading
machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first
text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of
recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments" and other
useful devices. [12]^10 In The Age of Spiritual Machines Kurzweil
notes that his own gadgets and those of other information
technologists have far outpaced earlier predictions about what
computers would be able to do. Ongoing developments in computing will
soon generate machines far more intelligent than human beings and with
far brighter prospects than their biological forbears. His conviction
hinges on a view of accelerating evolutionary change, one increasingly
common among high tech professionals, that sees evolution moving from
its original locus within biological systems to a new realm of
possibilities, the self-organizing dynamism of artificial systems.
[13]^11 In effect, he argues, time is speeding up because the time
between salient events in the development of computing power is
rapidly diminishing; accomplishments that recently seemed impossible
are upon us in an instant:
Evolution has been seen as a billion-year drama that led inexorably
to its grandest creation: human intelligence. The emergence in the
early twenty-first century of a new form of intelligence on Earth
that can compete with, and ultimately significantly exceed, human
intelligence will be a development of greater import than any of
the events that have shaped human history. [14]^12
Central to Kurzweil's prophecy is an experience increasingly
familiar to those who use personal computers and other digital
equipment, that is, the continuing replacement of computing systems by
newer, faster, more powerful ones in ever shortening cycles. With each
successive upgrade, people transfer valuable information from the
older system to the newer one. In the not-too-distant future this
sequence of replacement, download, and renewal will, acccording to
Kurzweil, include not just Pentium chips and personal digital
assistants, but human beings themselves. "Initially," Kurzweil opines,
"there will be partial porting--replacing memory circuits, extending
pattern-recognition and reasoning circuits through neural implants.
Ultimately, and well before the twenty-first century is completed,
people will port their entire mind file to the new thinking
technology." [15]^13 Before long, humans and machines will totally
merge, and the new creature's artificial features (in contrast to its
biological ones) will be universally recognized as superior. Looking
forward to this new era, Kurzweil condescendingly refers to humans as
MOSHs, "Mostly Original Substrate Humans," people "still using native
carbon-based neurons and unenhanced by neural implants." [16]^14
Within this world even the most conservative MOSH would be forced to
realize that the crucial, enduring entity--intelligence itself--no
longer depends on any particular, physically and spatially defined,
computational home. Barring unforeseen mishaps, intelligent beings of
this sort can expect to be immortal. Alas, the poor souls who do not
find ways to download their intelligence into the mechanism will be
excluded from any meaningful participation in the new order of things.
On the scale of outrageous projection, robotics engineer Hans
Moravec outdistances even Kurzweil in imagining a future thoroughly
sanitized of human beings and their debilities. As he proclaims in
Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, "Today, as our machines
approach human competence across the board, our stone-age biology and
information age lives grow ever more mismatched." [17]^15 The growth
of increasingly "intelligent" computerized robotic devices, he
believes, points to the creation of both new, superior, artificial
beings and new worlds to house them: "Our artificial progeny will grow
away from and beyond us, both in physical distance and structure, and
similarity of thought and motive. In time their activities may become
incompatible with the old Earth's continued existence." [18]^16
Moravec sees the eventual replacement of humans as foreshadowed
by ongoing innovations in the business world, changes propelled by the
quest for better service at lower prices. Phone calls are handled by
intelligent systems of voice mail; automated teller machines handle
much of the work of banking; and automated factories increasingly
handle the work of production as the contribution of human labor
subsides. [19]^17 He expects developments of this variety to spread,
absorbing all significant areas of economic activity before long. Even
the belief that the owners of the means of production are the ones who
will guide these changes and benefit from them is, in Moravec's view,
woefully mistaken. Before long, he suggests, "owners will be pushed
out of capital markets by much cheaper and better robotic decision
makers." [20]^18
Moravec imagines generations of robots in the distant future
that look less and less like the clunky machines we see today, and
more and more like artificial, self-reproducing organisms. One has the
shape of "the basket starfish"; another model, "the Bush Robot"
features a stem, tree-like branches, balls attached to its limbs like
fruit, and microscopic fingers that "might be able to build a copy of
itself in about ten hours." [21]^19 Eventually super-intelligent
creatures of this kind, "Ex-humans" or "Exes," would grow weary of the
limitations of Earth, seeking their fortunes elsewhere in the
universe. The question of what will become of ordinary humans in this
brave new world is for Moravec of little concern. It is clear that his
sympathies lie with the smarter, more resourceful, more powerful
successors to our pathetically weak and incompetent species. At one
point he suggests that when robots end up producing all foods and
manufactured goods, "humans may work to amuse other humans." [22]^20
In the longer term, however, this pattern is likely to prove unstable.
"Biological species," he writes, "almost never survive encounters with
superior competitors." He speculates that generations of robots who
leave the Earth may eventually return with aggressive intentions.
An entity that fails to keep up with its neighbors is likely to be
eaten, its space, materials, energy, and useful thoughts
reorganized to serve another's goals. Such a fate may be routine
for humans who dally too long on slow Earth before going Ex.
[23]^21
There is something refreshing in the sheer candor of Moravec's
predictions. Pushing the logic of the post-humanist dreams to their
ultimate conclusion, he imagines that anthropoid throwbacks will be
hunted down and shot.
For some fascinated by notions of post-human beings, merely
imagining these possibilities is not enough. A small but vocal
collection of social activists has taken it upon themselves to demand
a rapid transition to a higher form of being, seeking to play a role
in its early stages. The Extropians, The Transhumanist Association,
the French guru Rael and his followers, as well as publicists J.
Hughes and the late F. M. Esfandiary, are among those who have made
transcendence of ordinary humanity their central mission, promoting
human cloning, genetic engineering, life extension, and human/machine
symbiosis as key steps to a better life. [24]^22 One of the more
visible campaigners at present is Kevin Warwick, professor of
cybernetics at Reading University in the U.K., who has gained
notoriety in his efforts to blur the line between scientific research
and vigorous advocacy. "I was born human," he writes. "But this was an
accident of fate--a condition merely of time and place. I believe it's
something we have the power to change." [25]^23 To this end, Warwick
has launched a series of experiments, implanting his own body with
computer chips, hoping to enhance his nervous system with additional
computing power and thereby contributing to his ultimate goal, the
creation of a race of "superhumans." One of his hopes is to eliminate
the cumbersome barriers to communication, the need to use language to
express our thoughts and feelings. A far better method is to "send
symbols and ideas and concepts without speaking." [26]^24 To
demonstrate this possibility Warwick installed matching computer chips
implanted in his own body and that of his wife, Irena, hoping to
establish direct communication between their nervous systems including
their most intimate sexual responses. This research, he believes,
could dispatch one of humankind's ancient maladies, the faked orgasm.
"The nervous system is full of electronic signals emanating from the
brain, which have physical effects, like the way Irena jumps when she
sees a spider," Warwick observes, "The implication could be never
faking an orgasm again." [27]^25 Indeed, for a society in which Viagra
has become a best selling prescription drug, Warwick's chips could
prove highly marketable.
Perfectibility in Decline
Because they are pitched at the level of pure fantasy or
tongue-in-cheek provocation, the claims of the post-humanists are
often difficult to accept at face value. Some of their conjectures and
proposals, however, are well within the realm of plausibility, close
enough to ongoing projects in fields of contemporary research and
development that they deserve careful scrutiny. We know, of course,
that cutting-edge technologies typically require large amounts of
public funding during their early stages. For that reason, both
citizens and elected officials should critically examine government
support of projects within the various orbits of post-human research,
especially since their success would have problematic policy
implications, for example, placing homo sapiens on the endangered
species list.
A useful setting in which to gauge post-humanist intentions is
the lengthy heritage of thinking about perfectibility, one that
includes the world's great religions, several schools of classical and
medieval philosophy, as well as much of modern social theory. From
Pythagoras to B. F. Skinner, perfectibilists in the West have
suggested a variety of paths for improving the species--mystical
reflection, religious devotion, moral discipline, well-tuned
education, psychological therapy, scientific advance, technological
productivity, rational breeding, and the creative shaping of
political, economic, and social institutions. [28]^26 Within this
sprawling, eternally optimistic tradition, the post-humanists have
selected a distinctive route, seeking to improve discrete units, the
physical bodies of present and future individuals. This approach,
found as early as Plato's commitment to selective breeding and pursued
more recently by the nineteenth-and twentieth-century eugenics
movements, gains renewed hope in potentially effective means of
technological intervention. Today it seems possible to succeed where
earlier attempts failed, fixing the ills and weaknesses of particular
bodies while realizing the vast potential stored in humanity's
decrepit physical shell. So thorough is the commitment of
post-humanists to the single unit, single body approach that it seems
inconceivable to them that other routes to perfectibility are open to
us. [29]^27
In fact, an alternative vision about how to improve humankind
has often been favored in modern philosophy, an approach whose
concerns and commitments provide a revealing contrast to post-humanist
schemes. Although the many expressions of this vision are far from
uniform in either theory or practice, its core of beliefs are fairly
consistent. The key premise is that humans are fundamentally social
beings whose development depends upon favorable conditions for forming
social bonds and sentiments. From this perspective, the path to
improvement for humanity involves changing institutions--laws,
governments, workplaces, dwellings, schools, and the like--in ways
that will nurture the potential of individuals and the groups of which
they are members. Real creativity in this regard comes not so much in
operating on particular atomistic individuals, but in shaping the
rule-guided frameworks and material structures of community life. Such
were the hopes of Condorcet, Rousseau, Godwin, Paine, Saint-Simon,
Fourier, Owen, Comte, Marx, Kropotkin, Goldman, Dewey, and a host of
others who believed that the essentially social character of men and
women offered the most promising prospects for positive change.
[30]^28
One of most beautifully crafted statements of this position in
modern thought is Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet's Sketch for a
Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, published in
1795. A nobleman by birth, mathematician and philosopher by vocation,
Condorcet was one of the literati who organized the Encyclopaedia and
promoted ideas linking scientific enlightenment to political reform.
Enmeshed in partisan struggles of the French Revolution, he eventually
found himself on the wrong side of a factional dispute and was forced
into hiding where, just before his capture and death in prison, he
wrote the Sketch, a much-abbreviated version of a larger work he had
planned. The book describes nine stages in world history plus a tenth
that lies in the future, arguing that there is a necessary,
irreversible tendency for human faculties to seek perfection:
In spite of the transitory successes of prejudice and the support
that it receives from the corruption of governments or peoples,
truth alone will obtain a lasting victory; we shall demonstrate how
nature has joined together indissolubly the progress of knowledge
and that of liberty, virtue and respect for the natural rights of
man. [31]^29
Resisting any hint of scientific elitism or technocracy,
Condorcet insists that the growth of knowledge is a powerful force for
equality and solidarity among the world's people. He recognizes that
three main causes of inequality--wealth, status, and education--are
found everywhere, but predicts their demise as improvements in the
practical arts expand productivity, eliminate scarcity, and make it
possible for everyone to earn a comfortable living. By the same token,
the spread of well-planned systems of universal education will tend to
rectify existing inequalities by informing people of the "common
rights to which they are called by nature." [32]^30 Echoing the
Socratic teaching that evil is rooted in ignorance, he argues that
age-old practices of tyranny and oppression will gradually vanish as a
scientific grasp of political affairs inspires new frameworks of law.
Because these favorable tendencies are universal among human beings,
not just in populations of Europe, he predicts that the achievement of
freedom, equality, and human rights will eventually occur in all the
nations of the world. "In short," he asks, "will not the general
welfare that results from the progress of the useful arts once they
are grounded on solid theory...incline mankind to humanity,
benevolence and justice?" [33]^31
The warm generosity of Condorcet's essay stands in stark
contrast to the hard-edged boosterism characteristic of today's
post-humanist manifestos. Nevertheless, the quest for improvement
mapped by Condorcet and his successors shares some common ground with
today's would-be visionaries: belief in the development of creative
intelligence ("reason" as the philosophes preferred) as the underlying
source of historical change; faith in limitless scientific advance as
a prime expression of this faculty; hope for the apotheosis of
humanity within a transcendent, deeply spiritual form of being. Where
the two approaches abruptly part company is a fork in the road where
the advocate has to decide who will continue on the journey and who
will not. Dreams of human equality and solidarity embraced by
liberals, utopians, socialists, and pragmatists of earlier generations
have no standing in theories of a post-humanist future. As we have
seen, the concerted effort to cultivate highly unequal successors to
homo sapiens is routinely applauded in post-humanist schemes,
celebrated as evidence that genetic and cybernetic breakthroughs are
finally proceeding apace. Obligatory expressions of ethical concern
about tensions between old-fashioned inferiors and newly engineered
superior specimens are typically given short shrift. After all, bold
pioneers busily charting our future have little patience with annoying
quibbles of that kind. As Silver, Stock, Kurzweil, Moravec, and
Warwick make perfectly clear, the unity of humankind is now in the
cross hairs, a likely casualty of the grand evolution of creative
intelligence. People who agonize about its demise are simply out of
touch with the direction of current and future events. [34]^32
For thinkers who claim to revere evolution so thoroughly and who
feature themselves as agents of the next evolutionary leap, the
post-humanists' choice of an unsocial, single unit atomism as the best
path to perfectibility is highly problematic. Recent scientific
accounts of evolution have stressed the inherent sociality of humans;
the ways in which human existence, survival, and ability adapt to
changing circumstances depend upon the inborn tendency of the species
to form and maintain groups. In fact, humans do not live as isolated
individuals characterized by bundles of atomistic traits. They are
always found in social settings and treat each new situation they
encounter as an opportunity to develop social bonds and social norms.
This fact is evidently given in our make-up, crucial to any realistic
understanding of who we are. [35]^33 Yet attention to the social
dimensions of human being and human evolution is missing in
post-humanist accounts of how we arrived here and where we are headed.
Even the list of human features scheduled for re-engineering,
bio-technical projects reflects the lack of awareness of humanity's
grounding in networks of sociality. Preferred are traits of
intelligence, physical strength, beauty, freedom from disease, and
longevity; it is these that dynamic research will seek to amplify. But
other qualities widely recognized as crucial to our
well-being--empathy, cooperativeness, the capacity to love and
nurture--are never mentioned on the agendas of post-humanist science.
This lop-sided view of human beings is also reflected in the
suggestions of post-humanists about how decisions on matters of policy
should be made. Here again an atomistic, single unit view of human
possibilities is the one praised as the best way to make choices, in
particular the setting offered by the so-called "free" market in which
rational individuals come together to make deals, buying and selling
the valuable goods and services. This view accords with the pungent
combination of market ideology and high-tech innovation that became a
hallmark of economic and political ideology in the United States
during the 1980s and 1990s. Notions of this kind are associated with
the rise of Silicon Valley, the creation of the Internet,
telecommunications reform, the vogue of venture capitalism, the stock
market boom of the Clinton years, and ecstatic celebrations of
cyberspace as the new locus of business and community life. Later, of
course, the same alluring blend of market and technology fell on hard
times, evident in the Dot-com bust, stock market collapse, and
financial scandals of WorldCom, Enron, and other high-flying
firms--the sad aftermath of what Federal Reserve Bank chairman Alan
Greenspan called the era of "irrational exuberance." Many prospectuses
in the post-humanist portfolio were penned during this New Gilded Age
(some of them obviously in hope of attracting venture capital) and
bear the distinctive stamp of the era's uncritical enthusiasm for
innovation propelled by de-regulated markets.
An illustration of how an economic philosophy of this kind
informs post-humanist programs is found in Gregory Stock's advice on
how to "redesign humans." He assures us that what some people find
disturbing possibilities for future genetic enhancement are merely
extensions of already common practices.
Even today, fashion and market preferences determine much more than
merely the selection of consumer products we find in the stores.
These factors also shape the biological world, determining the
crops we plant, the domestic animals we raise, the flowers we grow,
the pets we lavish with attention. [36]^34
It is a logical next step, in Stock's opinion, to regard genetic
choice technologies (GCTs) as market commodities subject to the
desires of individuals. Hence, the market is the best way to select
good GCTs (the ones people actually want to buy) as compared to
undesirable GCTs (those that fail to attract enough customers): "When
people have a range of reproductive options, they generally try to get
what they want in the easiest, cheapest, safest, most reversible way."
[37]^35
Stock expects that the key decisions about human biology will be
made within the framework of an emerging, capitalist, global economy,
making good GCT market products available worldwide at bargain prices.
His fear is that Americans will listen to those who have misgivings
about human enhancement and designer children, missing a great
opportunity to take the lead in this exciting growth industry. Thus,
he urges Americans to forge boldly ahead with human genetic
technologies and "not pull back and relinquish their development to
braver souls in more adventurous nations of the world." [38]^36
In view of the market-centered calamities of the early 21^st
century and the frantic rush to re-regulate accounting and the rules
that govern corporate management, advice of this kind seems reckless.
Is it wise to subject fundamental, long-term choices about the
structure and character of human beings to the caprices and
vicissitudes of the global shopping mall? After all, who decided that
market settings and market motives are the best means for deciding
humanity's long-term future? In actual practice, a likely consequence
of reliance on the unmodified market model is to favor the cultural
preferences of small, unrepresentative groups of people--corporations
and consumers in well-to-do countries of the North--over the desires
and commitments of the world's populace as a whole. Unfortunately, the
writings of post-humanists show little awareness of their deep
cultural biases and, indeed, of the breathtaking cultural arrogance
their proposals involve. Many of their ideas about how the future of
humanity will unfold clearly assume that it is "Just we folks,"
ordinary, everyday people who will decide what will happen. But the
advocates have not looked carefully at how their notions reflect
unstated, unexamined preconceptions rooted in their own highly
rarified, upper-middle-class, white, professional, American and
European lifestyles. In post-humanist writings a deeply assumed map of
the relevant lifeworld seems to stretch from the university laboratory
to the fertility clinic, to the BMW dealer, and on to the nearest
Nordstroms. Somewhere within this landscape they evidently expect to
find the new Ubermensch, maybe wearing an Abercrombie t-shirt.
Nowhere is the obtuse arrogance of post-humanist rhetoric more
apparent than in its incessant claim that the changes at issue are
foreordained by history or, even better, by evolution itself. "The
accelerating pace of change is inexorable," Kurzweil exclaims. "The
emergence of machine intelligence that exceeds human intelligence in
all of its broad diversity is inevitable." [39]^37 Echoing these
sentiments, Stock subtitles his book on the redesign of humans, Our
Inevitable Genetic Future. The underlying message in such
proclamations is perfectly clear: faced with the powerful momentum of
bio-technical developments, only a fool goes searching for
alternatives or limits.
Counsel of this kind is absurd on its face, for it denies what
all serious studies of scientific and technological change have shown,
namely, that technological changes of any significance involve intense
social interaction, competition, conflict, and negotiation in which
the eventual outcomes are highly contingent. Within the making and
application of new technologies, there are always competing interests,
contesting positions on basic principles, and numerous branching
points in which people choose among several options, giving form to
the instrumentalities finally realized, discarding others that may
have seemed attractive. Modern history is filled with examples of
technological developments announced as "inevitable" that never took
root--personal helicopters, atomic airplanes, videophones, and
extensive colonies in outer space, among others. Nuclear power, for
example, touted in the 1950s as an ineluctable product of modern
physics and source of all future electricity, eventually encountered
problems of construction costs, plant safety, and waste disposal that
undermined its social and political support, perhaps for all time.
From this standpoint, announcements that particular outcomes are
"inevitable" can be little more than attempts to hijack what might
otherwise be a lively debate, excluding most people from the
negotiations. A group of privileged actors proclaims: "Good news! The
future has been foreclosed! Your needs, dreams, ideas, and
contributions are no longer relevant. But thanks for listening."
At present there are more than six billion humans living on
Earth, most of whom have not yet heard of the grand schemes flowing
from Westwood, Princeton, Cambridge, Santa Cruz, and other meccas of
post-humanist speculation. If this wider populace knew what the
intellectuals and entrepreneurs had in store for them, they might want
to take a closer look, asking to participate in the decisions at
stake, not just as consumers of end products of innovation, but as
citizens who would like a voice in deciding basic principles and
policies. After all, to alter our species significantly or to seek to
eliminate human beings for all time would seem to be a matter that
requires the most serious study, reflection, and debate. At the very
least, it makes sense to discover whether or not there is consensus
among the world's people that the sweeping changes proposed with such
alacrity are warranted or desirable.
I cannot predict much less prescribe what this wider set of
groups and persuasions might decide when faced with these proposals.
But if they examined the agendas for the so-called improvements the
post-humanists prefer, a more inclusive population might notice some
extremely odd judgments about what counts as superior. They might
notice, for example, disturbing similarities to ideas of "superiority"
that have been imposed through slavery, colonialism, and genocide,
and, alas, occasional agendas of scientific research during the modern
era, projects that have done little to buttress confidence that
professionals in the North have everyone's best interests at heart.
Asked what they would like to do, perhaps the world's populace might
point to more urgent projects long promised but left undone, for
example, securing adequate nutrition, sanitation, housing, health
care, and education for the three billion among us who are still in
desperate need. Better genes and electronic implants? Hell, how about
potable water?
In this light, the vision in Condorcet's last testament still
demands attention; the real challenge lies in realizing the potential
of all humans regardless of their prior condition of poverty and
oppression. Until that hope is fulfilled, post-humanist ambitions will
seem irrelevant or patently obscene.
________________________
[40]^1 René Descartes, Discourse on Method, Book Six. ] [41]^2 See,
for example, Human Development Report 2000, United Nations Development
Programme (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). ] [42]^3 Gregory
Stock, Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global
Superorganism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) 150, 152, 164, 168. ]
[43]^4 Gregory Stock, "Introduction," Human Germline Engineering:
Implications for Science and Society
[44]<http://research.mednet.ucla.edu/pmts/Germline/bhwf.htm>. ] [45]^5
Stock, Metaman, 168. ] [46]^6 Lee M. Silver, Remaking Eden: Cloning
and Beyond in a Brave New World (New York: Avon, 1997) 4, 6. ] [47]^7
Silver 7. ] [48]^8 Silver 7. ] [49]^9 "Liberation Biology," an
interview with Lee M. Silver, Reason Online (May 1999)
[50]<http://www.reason.com/9905/fe.rb.liberation.html>. ] [51]^10 See
"A Brief Career Summary of Ray Kurzweil,"
[52]<http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html>. ] [53]^11 See, for
example, Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines,
Social Systems and the Economic World (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1994).
] [54]^12 Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers
Exceed Human Intelligence (New York: Viking, 1999) 5. ] [55]^13
Kurzweil 126. ] [56]^14 Kurzweil 311. ] [57]^15 Hans Moravec, Robot:
Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999) 7. ] [58]^16 Moravec 11. ] [59]^17 Moravec 130. ] [60]^18
Moravec 133. ] [61]^19 Moravec 152. ] [62]^20 Moravec 132. ] [63]^21
Moravec 146. ] [64]^22 J. Hughes' views are especially interesting
because he situates them in the context of radical democratic
political theory. See Hughes, "Embracing Change with All Four Arms: A
Post-Humanist Defense of Genetic Engineering," Eubios Journal of Asian
and International Bioethics code 6.4 /code (June 1996): 94- code 101
/code [65]<http://www.changesurfer.com/Hlth/Genetech.html>>. ] [66]^23
Kevin Warwick, "Cyborg 1.0," Wired code 8.02 /code
[67]<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.02/warwick_pr.html>. ]
[68]^24 Warwick in
[69]<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.02/warwick_pr.html>. ]
[70]^25 Kevin Warwick, quoted in "Microchip Hailed as `End of the
Faked Orgasm,'" Annova ( code 5 /code October 2000)
[71]<http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_76805.html>
[72]<http://www.changesurfer.com/Hlth/Genetech.html>. ] [73]^26 An
excellent overview of this tradition can be found in John Passmore,
The Perfectibility of Man (London: Duckworth, 1970). ] [74]^27 The
reasons why visionary technologists sometimes prefer "operating unit
designs" are discussed in Robert Boguslaw, The New Utopians: A Study
of System Design and Social Change (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall,
1965) chapter code 5 /code . ] [75]^28 A classic interpretation of
ideas of this kind is Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian
Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1979). ] [76]^29 Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical
Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, trans. June Barraclough
(1795; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1955) code 10 /code . ]
[77]^30 Condorcet 184. ] [78]^31 Condorcet 193. ] [79]^32 For a
modestly worded critique of proposals for human bioengineering, see
Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the
Biotechnology Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002).
Fukuyama worries that "the posthuman world could be one that is far
more hierarchical and competitive than the one that currently exists,
and full of social conflict as a result" (218). ] [80]^33 See L. R.
Caporael, "Parts and Wholes: The Evolutionary Importance of Groups,"
Individual Self, Relational Self, Collective Self, ed. Constantine
Sedikides and Marilynn B. Brewer (Philadelphia: Psychology, 2000) code
241 /code -58; and R. F. Baumeister and M. R. Leary, "The Need to
Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human
Motivation," Psychological Bulletin code 117 /code (1995): 497- code
529 /code . ] [81]^34 Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans: Our
Inevitable Genetic Future (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002) code 34
/code . ] [82]^35 Stock, Redesigning Humans, 60- code 1 /code . ]
[83]^36 Stock, Redesigning Humans, code 201 /code . ] [84]^37 Kurzweil
code 253 /code . ]
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