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Essay / Transhumanism and posthuman future: the consequences of technological progress
At the beginning of the 21st century, humanity enters a new stage of its development, when scenarios of technological improvement of human nature cease to seem fantastic.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayInitially, the creation of new biomedical technologies was aimed at correcting certain pathological conditions of the human body, restoring its disturbed functions and structures, which was usually referred to the field of medicine. However, at present, this trend of creating and using “human-oriented” technologies is taking a new direction. Growing interest not only among scientists and engineers, but also among the general public, is attracted by the ideas of human improvement, empowerment of a person endowed with exceptional abilities and properties - physical, intellectual, mental and even moral, which can develop capacities. and opportunities at a new, previously inaccessible level. The emergence of transhumanism as a philosophical approach, which raises the question of new forms of human existence in the context of technological and informational progress, responds to the changes that are taking place. Transhumanist ideas originate from the idea of the imperfection of human nature and the need for its improvement (improvement). Transhumanism is a worldview that, based on advanced technological achievements of science, confirms the need for human evolution/improvement. Man is represented as a being who has not completed his evolution and is capable of achieving an “evolutionary breakthrough” using scientific and technical tools. In fact, transhumanism is the desire to go beyond a person's physiological characteristics, representing the individual as potentially unlimited in their development. Accordingly, a posthuman, according to their understanding, is a physiologically completely changed person who has exceeded the limit of his original innate capabilities. Transhumanism intends to construct a new person, whose abilities will be artificially defined. at birth, regulated, and all imperfections, such as suffering, illness, old age, death, will be eliminated. Thus, transhumanism reduces a person to a certain set of characteristics that can be controlled. As a result, new forms of responsibility arise, in which the boundary between people and things becomes blurred. Improvement therefore not only has purely technical consequences, but also consequences linked to the ethical level. Thanks to such technologies, a person is able to change his body, its functions, to “improve” himself. After losing a leg or other limb, a person can obtain a prosthesis, which will not only allow them to stand and regain the ability to walk, but beyond that, will allow them to run much faster than normal. an ordinary person. Or: After surgery, a person who previously had poor eyesight improved his vision above normal. Is it a cure, or is it an immediate “improvement”? How can we draw a line between treatment and “improvement”? Many problems lurk here, starting with what can be considered an improvement, and not a simple remedy, and ending with a difficult question about the status of the norm in relation to human nature. The questions “what is a person?” arise here too with great urgency. Transhumanism pays very little attention to this point, it considers human nature as somethingsomething given and acquired, while nothing intelligible on this subject from the transhumanists has been said. Transhumanist discourse tells us about the possibility of moral "improvement" of a person. Moral Improvement of a person through the use of modern technology is provided by transhumanists - real humanitarian assistance to humanity. It is therefore necessary to provide the opportunity to promote these technologies to the masses, so that everyone can participate. But those who cannot afford such "improvements" to their bodies may become less competitive in society. (The emergence of a class of people who not only surpass others at the level of property, but also at the objective level of "improvement." With a little futurological thinking, we will get a new "race" of people (superhumans?), which ordinary people will face Such technologies can cause (generate) new forms of inequality and injustice Today, the trend towards research on the brain and consciousness, in. particular on consciousness, has begun, although this is dangerous territory, because no one knows what it is. What we can say is that "I know that I am". This is called first-person experience. It is, as we hope, something that almost no animal and yet artificial intelligence has. : in his opinion, it will be possible in the near future to insert chips that will accelerate the course of biochemical processes in the brain, a chip that will increase your memory and improve the brain, the liver eaten by cirrhosis due to excessive consumption of alcohol, can be replaced by a new one, which will be grown from your stem cells. "It's real, no jokes or metaphors. The heart can also be replaced now, the broken hands-feet in Courchevel, easily replaced. The eyes, the ears." Is there anything that belongs to you? Is it still me? This is a serious ethical question. Is there stability of personality, is there stability of sex and is there this personality itself? "I can't stand social media, even though I'm on it, but someone else is doing it there, not me. And now how can I prove that it's not me. Is the person you correspond with a real person or is it a ghost and is it just a one of a kind program or is it a program that represents a million personalities, and there is no one? no one at all? Where is it? Does it have a place, a time, does it have an address, does it have a name? on artificial intelligence and it's called the liquid world? everything has disintegrated, separated "Here we find ourselves before an unpleasant, but important question: to what extent are digital technologies changing us? We are seeing what is now called the Google effect: we sit on the needle very quickly for information at any time. This leads to the fact that we have a different type of memory. Working memory becomes very short. In 2011, an experiment was published in the journal Science: it was proven that students who have constant and quick access to the computer (and now that's practically everything) can memorize much less information than those who were students before this time. This means that the brain has changed since then. Now it all comes down to the fact that it becomes an appendage to the computer. We store in long-term computer memory what should have been stored in our brains. According to McLuhan's theory, summarized by “the medium is the message”states that “every invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical body. , and such an extension also requires new relationships or new balances between the other organs and extensions of the body. » In general, for McLuhan, mediums are technologies which, with more or less intensity, affect the appearance of society at one moment or another in history: “it is the medium which shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action. The most intense influence, according to McLuhan, on the development of society had in turn: 1) the invention of writing; 2) the invention of printing; 3) the emergence of electrical technology. Each of these technologies modifies human relationships. feelings: in communities where speech predominates, hearing is a more important ability than vision; with the advent of writing, sight becomes more important than hearing, and with the appearance of print, hearing finally gives way to sight. For McLuhan, the man of the age of print technologies is a visually oriented person. The opposite movement of the visual occurs in the era of the emergence of electrical technology: the enormous speed with which electricity can transmit information narrows the social world of a person, transforming the world into a "global village" . Furthermore, McLuhan views electrical technology as an external extension of the human nervous system: "Today, after more than a century of electrical technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself into a global perspective. » Each of us is sure at least once in our life. life thought, what awaits us in the future: will robots make people serious competition, will there be flying cars or, for example, food, medicines, houses can be printed on 3D printers. Meanwhile, in the 21st century, filmmakers and thinkers are showing us an "apocalyptic" vision of the future, in which the world is plagued by economic and social problems, where one ecological catastrophe is replaced by another, where new diseases and phobias appear. However, not all professional researchers see the future this way. Ekaterina Shulman, associate professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Science and Technology, has a rather joyful and optimistic view of the future. In his lectures, Shulman often talks about the incredible times in which we will live. According to her, society will move from the industrial economy to the post-deficit, post-work economy. “We will live in a world in which the idea of a working day disappears,” says Ekaterina Shulman. “The old system – getting an education and practicing a profession until death – is also a thing of the past.” We will find ourselves in a world where a person is constantly learning. You will not have a certain profession and a certain workplace, people will work by uniting around projects, and not around professions. "Although it is possible to trace only a certain general outline of this hypothetical future, all the features of the future we can already see in the present (and the future, of course, arises from the present and does not suddenly arise in its final form), represent a repetition of the past at a new technical and social level We are entering an era when the production of goods will cease to be the highest value and the main human occupation. The tools of this transition are the. automation, robotics, new communications and information technologies Because many sectors are now highly technological, they require less physical human labor. But, on the other hand, they require participation..