Читать книгу Critical Humanism - Ken Plummer - Страница 29

The most well-known contemporary debate about humanity is that it is being enhanced and changed out of all recognition by new technologies. This becomes the challenge of transhumanism. Western Enlightenment ideas (and often secular humanism) evolve to show how new digital technologies, artificial intelligence, space travel, etc. are leading to a new humanity. We are becoming a supercharged, superintelligent, machine-based techno-animal. Transhumanism becomes ‘an intensification of humanism’.⁵⁶ It leads to better health and a longer life, enhances our capacities, and increases our control over minds and bodies. We have already become quantified, data selves.⁵⁷ But we have further to go: the machine (and singularity) will take over (and probably rightly so!). At its tipping point, we face superintelligence: machines will move far beyond the level of the existing human being. Today’s humanity will be superseded by the hyperintelligence of transhumanism.