Human Augmentation: [Blurring Out The Line Separating Biology And Technology]

Just like I have always said repeatedly:

The future world could favour technology over biology

Some might not quite understand what this statement actually means, but I'll try to explain it with few examples.

As a way of introduction, I would love to remind us that technology is evolving rapidly in a repeated pattern; and humankind is currently in the edge of a major technological evolution. And in my own term, I have referred to this as the evolution of the human machines (or you can call it mechanical humans). I welcome us to the era of human augmentation.

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Before now; in the field of bionics for example; bionics and prosthesis were only seen and used therapeutically for people with certain form of medical conditions; until recently when people began to willingly subscribe to bionic augmentations. And as simple as this sounds, these augmentations are pointing out to one direction, which is; Merging humans with machines.

There are actually many sides to human augmentations, but we will be focusing on very few of them that could potentially blur out the dividing line between humans and machine.

Remember this phrase:

A perfectly advanced technology is almost indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

A time is coming when it would be almost impossible to distinguish between organic humans and bionic humans.

Evolving beyond human

The next phase of human evolution has been heralded, and this is the phase that will transition humans into something beyond humans, This is referred to as Posthuman; which some call Transhuman (Human+, H+).

Though posthumanism and transhumanism are used interchangeably, here's a little difference between them. Transhumanism is majorly used to describe the way technological advancement interacts with humankind through modifications of some biological functions. While posthumanism could be seen as the transition from humankind into something beyond or above humans. In other words, posthumanism could be a resultant effect of transhumanism.

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Posthumanism beckons with postmodernism

You won't be totally wrong to infer that humankind is in the last days of their existence as an absolute organic being. The rate at which our bodies are being altered has simply thrown the world into awe. In this era, the "voice" of technology has been seen to sound louder than ever.

As a result of the imperfectability associated with human, and the underlying limitations with the human abilities; it has been speculated that the only way to circumvent this challenge is to move beyond humanism. But at what expense? Sure you guessed right; at the expense of our humanity.

Just like one of the proponents of posthumanism rightly pointed out:

Posthumanism is set to move humans at the zenith of their existence, but the ability of free will could be lost forever. - Manuel de Landa [Paraphrased by me]

"Free will" has been one of the features that has separated humans from machine. But as it has been said; with the merging of humans with technology; it could be lost to posthumanism.

That means, the totality of our existence could be dependent on mechanical devices, and these devices could dictate the pace for us. But looking at the fair side of it; since these devices are inside us; remotely, we're still the ones responsible for these actions and inactions. Now this part is really getting weirder.

I won't also have you ignorant of the fact that mechanical devices are not the only thing turning humankind into Human+. Let's look at another aspect of Transhumanism.

Transhumanism meets Transmutation

Advances in genetic transmutation has greeted this era with awesome feats. Now editing can be made to humans at the gene level.

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We are currently evolving into the era where we can create the kind of humans we want, with the traits we desire. Thanks to advanced genetic engineering.

Come to think of this scenario: When genetically modified organic human is further tweaked with other bionic devices; it would be total farewell to "human as usual" and welcome to "human unusual".

A particular feat struck me and I feel  like sharing it here before concluding:

In the later part of 2017, a team of researchers led by Professor Kathy Niakan edited a five-day old embryo right in its mother's womb in UK. They successfully edited out a particular gene which they believed would result in an early development, using advanced CRISPR  (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat) genome-editing tool.

Does this strike you with anything? Well, in my own opinion, I would say that the battle for superiority between "technology" and "biology" could ultimately be won in favour of technology.

Conclusion

I would conclude this post on a lighter mood with a humorous remark made by one of my friends concerning this particular topic:

Machines could be better than humans, but the only advantage humans would have over machine is the ability to lie :)

Thanks for reading

References for further reading: Ref1, Ref2, Ref3, Ref4, Ref5 

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