Transhumanism: A Bad Idea That’s Not Going Away
Transhumanism is an ideology and loosely organized social movement with roots in
early 20th century eugenicism, science fiction and modernist technophilia, and New Age
yearnings. Because it draws on even earlier mythologies of superhuman powers and
eternal life, and is continually renewed by improvements in technological know-how, the
impulse behind transhumanism appears to be a perennial theme in human cultures.
Much of transhumanism-related thinking involves body (“somatic”) modification
employing pharmaceuticals, cosmetic surgery, and prostheses (including electronic
brain implants). This aspect is continuous with existing medical practice and it is
difficult to disentangle transhumanist motivations for extending these applications from
the general individual-centered perfectionism of competitive, market-based societies.
More distinctive forms of transhumanism look toward introducing inheritable (“germ
line”) changes in the human species, a prospect acknowledged even by its advocates as
threatening to produce separate biologically advantaged and disadvantaged classes.
Coinciding with the rise of animal research technologies such as germ line manipulation,
cloning, interspecies chimerism and stem cells, transhumanism acquired an increasingly
prominent organizational presence at the end of the 20th century in the form of such
groups as the futurist Extropy Institute, Clonaid, a spin-off of the Raelian cult, and the
academically-oriented World Transhumanist Association (WTA). It also spawned a genre
of pop-scientific literature under rubrics such as “reprogenetics” and “genetic choice,”
devoted to market development for the promised improvement services.
Although the technical problems associated with attempts to remold organismal
traits have proved formidable, and experimentation on unconsenting prospective
humans remains legally fraught, genetic markers of personal identity, as assayed by
such businesses as the Google-associated 23andMe, are increasingly fashionable.
Transhumanism-themed academic conferences like “Human Enhancement Technologies
and Human Rights” at Stanford University in 2006 and “Transhumanism Meets Design”
organized by the transhumanist organization Humanity+ (reconfigured from the defunct
Extropy Institute and the WTA) at Parsons The New School for Design in 2011, as well
as the elite digital industry-funded, corporate-oriented Singularity University in Silicon
Valley, California, have carried on the work of normalizing transhumanist aspirations,
framing them in human rights language, and developing strategies for neutralizing legal
obstacles to their implementation.