Are we already transhuman?

It’s easy to think about the future when we talk about transhumanism. It’s easy to imagine cyborgs with robotic limbs, hooked up to implanted supercomputers. But the core idea behind transhumanism – the willingness to transform the human condition – does not strictly require sci-fi future technology. If you look into the past and analyze human history, you can see how we’ve been continuously reinventing ourselves through the ages.

If a person from the 19th century could see us today, he would almost certainly consider us superhuman beings. Our modern consumerist society, dominated by cars, planes, electricity, and the Internet would appear utterly alien to him. Our average life expectancy is over 60% longer than it was in 1900. We are taller, stronger, and more resistant to disease. We cured smallpox, which killed 900 people in 1900.  We can travel almost anywhere on the globe in a day or two, and we can communicate around the globe nearly instantly. Our list of accomplishments, even when limited to the past century, is stunning. If transhumanism existed back in the 19th century, then we would surely have achieved those goals and then some. It would be impossible for the 19th century person to even imagine the society that we live in today. Sure, it’s not a perfect society, but it’s far from a dystopia.

Take a moment to consider just how tightly technology is integrated into our daily lives. Nowadays, it’s pretty much impossible to get a job without having a car or using taxis or subways. Think about the last time you lost or damaged your phone or computer. You feel a sense of loss, a sense of disconnection – almost as if you have lost a part of yourself. Without your phone or computer, you are no longer you.

And it’s completely true. With technology, we have completely built a digital version of ourselves from the ground up. On Facebook and other social media sites, we have created an idealized version of ourselves in order to interact with others. On my hard drive, there are pages and pages of me, and how I have changed over the years. If my hard drive crashed, it would be as if I have lost part of my history and identity. Think about it: we are the first generation that will be truly immortal, with our legacies written in bits of code that will be able to persist on the Internet. We record and store all of our accomplishments in the cloud. No longer do we have to rely on others to remember us, when technology can do that instead. This is so second nature to us that we don’t even have to consider it.

This very blog post, written in Google Docs and published on WordPress, is now the latest addition to the digital me. I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination to say that we are fundamentally different from the 19th century person, who cannot drive like we do, cannot communicate like we do, and cannot be remembered as we will be remembered. We are already transhuman.

Sure, there are problems with our society today. We are certainly not equally transhuman; there are billions of people without access to cars, the internet or computers. The problem of accessibility is still there. But I would say that our society is unequivocally better than it was in the 19th century, because we have been willing to reinvent the way we live, work, and interact with others. Of course, it’s scary to think about the unknown future. But the past has shown that transhumanism works and has been improving our lives. I, for one, am very excited to see what the future of technology holds in store for us.