Will Humans Even Want to be Transhuman?
Charles Rubin has some interesting thoughts as to whether current cultural trends lend themselves to people having any significant desire for transhumanism, which is in response to Kyle Munkittrick’s article in which he lays out the seven ways we’ll know if transhumanism’s arrived. In particular, I think his first two points are worth noting:
1. Recent concerns about too-skinny models, increasing interest in exposing Photoshopped versions of already-beautiful people, and of course the constant use of celebrity plastic surgery as a topic for satire suggest that there is a broad undercurrent of distrust about body modification that places people too far outside a certain norm. This attitude may not always have the highest motives, but were it to gain momentum it would suggest there would not be much toleration for experiments in more radical bodily modification of the sort that the more “free”-spirited transhumanists celebrate.
2. Whether or not it has a solid rational basis, lots of people are suspicious of genetically modified (GM) foods and the businesses that produce them. For many foods, having no GM ingredients has become something to advertise. If this resistance grows, it is hard to imagine how people who will not eat a GM corn chip will rush right in and have their prospective progeny genetically tweaked.
I think that there are some interesting psychological components being discussed here that don’t often get discussed a lot, but culture does play a huge role in the adoption of technology, and I think that there is a very real unease with some aspects of genetic engineering and human modification that doesn’t get a lot of play among transhumanist advocates. But technological adoption is as much about the desire for technology as much as its utility. For example, the cultural trend to prefer airplanes to zeppelins for travel had almost as much to do with the Hindenberg incident as it did the greater usefulness of airplanes.
Who knows what cultural influences there might be that impact our view of human enhancement? In the Star Trek universe, genetic enhancements were forbidden by the Federation because the early history of genetic engineering included the Eugenics Wars – a series of wars fought on Earth between rival genetically enhanced persons. And while I doubt that early transhumanism will lead to a world war, it might not take too many accidents to convince people to leave well enough alone when it comes to enhancing themselves.
In another vein, economic reasons may trump a lot of visions of transhumanism, as well. Just a few decades ago, when the home video wars began, Beta was a superior format to VHS, but VHS was non-proprietary and less expensive to manufacture, so VHS won out until the dawn of the DVD. In the same vein, it might just simply be a lot more feasible to improve smartphones and mobile computers than it would be to build elaborate brain-computer interfaces in order to get a couple of second’s edge on a Google search. Ditto genetic engineering vs. pharmacology or just better fitness equipment and cultural norms when it comes to diet and exercise.
Economic and cultural factors often go overlooked when people consider the technologies of the future, but they play a huge role in what technologies get adopted and what falls by the wayside.
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