Transhumanists want technology to carry humans beyond aging, a dream as old as Gilgamesh
Transhumanism argues that science should be used not just to heal people but to upgrade them: longer lives, sharper minds, perhaps eventually beings who surpass today's humans. The label took hold in 1957, but philosopher Nick Bostrom traces the impulse back to Gilgamesh's search for immortality and the legendary Fountain of Youth.
Biologist Julian Huxley popularised the word, describing humanity consciously transcending its limits through reason and science while remaining fundamentally human, though a Canadian philosopher, W. D. Lighthall, had used it in 1940. The modern movement grew in the late twentieth century. The futurist FM-2030 described transitional people as transhuman from 1966, and Max More shaped it into a family of philosophies around 1990. Today it concentrates on nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science, and some adherents also study existential risks such as runaway artificial intelligence, pandemics and nuclear war.
Advocates claim a long lineage. Dante invented a verb meaning to pass beyond human nature. In 1637 René Descartes imagined medicine granting stronger minds and physical immortality, and William Godwin argued for earthly immortality in 1793, later writing a novel on the theme that may have inspired his daughter Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Russian cosmism anticipated similar ideas, and in 1923 geneticist J. B. S. Haldane predicted that every biological advance would first strike someone as indecent and unnatural. J. D. Bernal followed in 1929 with visions of space colonies and bionic implants.
Computing added a new strand. In 1965 the British cryptologist I. J. Good described an intelligence explosion, in which a machine cleverer than any person designs even better machines, the seed of the technological singularity. Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil developed the theme. The first self-described transhumanists met at UCLA in the early 1980s, Eric Drexler's 1986 book on nanotechnology spurred the Foresight Institute, and More co-founded the Extropy Institute in 1992.
The movement draws fierce criticism from religious, ethical and political quarters. Some critics see in it a revival of eugenics dressed as personal choice, while debate continues over how far Nietzsche's superhuman ideal belongs to its heritage.
Source: Transhumanism
