Outline of transhumanism

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to transhumanism:

Transhumanism – international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.^[1] Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as study the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies.^[1] They predict that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".^[1] Transhumanism is often abbreviated as H+ or h+ ("humanism plus").

Transhumanist currents

• Abolitionism – ethical ideology based upon a perceived obligation to use technology to eliminate involuntary suffering in all sentient life.^[2]
• Democratic transhumanism – political ideology synthesizing liberal democracy, social democracy, radical democracy and transhumanism.^[3]
• Extropianism – early school of transhumanist thought characterized by a set of principles advocating a proactive approach to human evolution.^[4]
• Immortalism – moral ideology based upon the belief that technological immortality is possible and desirable, and advocating research and development to ensure its realization.^[5]
• Libertarian transhumanism – political ideology synthesizing libertarian capitalism and transhumanism.^[6]
• Postgenderism – social philosophy which seeks the voluntary elimination of gender in the human species through the application of advanced biotechnology and assisted reproductive technologies.^[7]
• Singularitarianism – moral ideology based upon the belief that a technological singularity is possible, and advocating deliberate action to affect it and ensure its safety.^[8]
• Technogaianism – ecological ideology based upon the belief that emerging technologies can help restore Earth's environment, and that developing safe, clean, alternative technology should therefore be an important goal of environmentalists.^[3]

Transhumanist technologies

Transhumanists believe that humans can and should use technologies to become more than human. Examples of the types of technologies and potential technologies that have become the focus of transhumanism include:

• Anti-aging – another term for "life extension".
• Artificial intelligence – intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents",^[9] where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines."^[10]
  • Friendly artificial intelligence – artificial intelligence (AI) that has a positive rather than negative effect on humanity. Friendly AI also refers to the field of knowledge required to build such an AI. AIs may be harmful to humans if steps are not taken to specifically design them to be benevolent. Doing so effectively is the primary goal of Friendly AI.
• Augmented reality – live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.
• Biomedical engineering – application of engineering principles and design concepts to biology and medicine, to improve healthcare diagnosis, monitoring and therapy.^[11] Applications include the development of biocompatible prostheses, clinical equipment, micro-implants, imaging equipment such as MRIs and EEGs, regenerative tissue growth, pharmaceutical drugs and therapeutic biologicals.
  • Neural engineering – discipline that uses engineering techniques to understand, repair, replace, enhance, or otherwise exploit the properties of neural systems. Neural engineers are uniquely qualified to solve design problems at the interface of living neural tissue and non-living constructs. Also known as "neuroengineering".
    • Neurohacking – colloquial term encompassing all methods of manipulating or interfering with the structure and/or function of neurons for improvement or repair.
• Biotechnology – field of applied biology that uses living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine, and manufacturing, among other fields. It encompasses a wide range of procedures for modifying living organisms for human purposes. Early examples of biotechnology include domestication of animals, cultivation of plants, and breeding through artificial selection and hybridization.
  • Bionics – in medicine, this refers to the replacement or enhancement of organs or other body parts by mechanical versions. Bionic implants differ from mere prostheses by mimicking the original function very closely, or even surpassing it.
    • Cyborg – being with both biological and artificial (e.g. electronic, mechanical or robotic) parts.
  • Brain-computer interface – direct communication pathway between the brain and an external device. BCIs are under development to assist, augment, or repair human cognitive and sensory-motor functions. Sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface (BMI).
  • Cloning – in biotechnology, this refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments (molecular cloning), cells (cell cloning), or organisms.
    • Human cloning – creation of a genetically identical copy of a human. It does not usually refer to monozygotic multiple births nor the reproduction of human cells or tissue. The term is generally used to refer to artificial human cloning; human clones in the form of identical twins are commonplace, with their cloning occurring during the natural process of reproduction.
    • Therapeutic cloning – application of somatic-cell nuclear transfer (a laboratory technique for creating a clonal embryo using an ovum with a donor nucleus) in regenerative medicine.
• Cognitive science – interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed (in faculties such as perception, language, memory, reasoning, and emotion), represented, and transformed in behaviour, (human or other animal) nervous system or machine (e.g., computer). It includes research on artificial intelligence.
• Computer-mediated reality – ability to add to, subtract information from, or otherwise manipulate one's perception of reality through the use of a wearable computer or hand-held device^[12] such as a smart phone.
• Converging technologies –
• Cryonics – low-temperature preservation of humans and animals who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology.
• Cyberware – hardware or machine parts implanted in the human body and acting as an interface between the central nervous system and the computers or machinery connected to it. Research in this area is a protoscience.
• Designer baby – baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilisation to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics.^[13]
• Emerging technologies – contemporary advances and innovation in various fields of technology, prior to or early in their diffusion. They are typically in the form of progressive developments intended to achieve a competitive advantage.^[14]
  • List of emerging technologies
• Human enhancement technologies (HET) – techniques used to treat illness or disability, or to enhance human characteristics and capacities.^[15]
• Human genetic engineering – alteration of an individual's genotype with the aim of choosing the phenotype of a newborn or changing the existing phenotype of a child or adult.^[16]
• Human-machine interface – the part of a machine that handles its human-machine interaction.
• Information technology – acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications.^[17]
• Head-mounted display (HMD) – display device, worn on the head or as part of a helmet, that has a small display optic in front of one (monocular HMD) or each eye (binocular HMD).
• Life extension – study of slowing down or reversing the processes of aging to extend both the maximum and average lifespan. Some researchers in this area, and persons who wish to achieve longer lives for themselves (called "life extensionists" or "longevists"), expect that future breakthroughs in tissue rejuvenation with stem cells, molecular repair, and organ replacement (such as with artificial organs or xenotransplantations) will eventually enable humans to live indefinitely (agerasia^[18]) through complete rejuvenation to a healthy youthful condition. Also known as anti-aging medicine, experimental gerontology, and biomedical gerontology.
• Mind uploading – hypothetical process of transferring or copying a conscious mind from a brain to a non-biological substrate by scanning and mapping a biological brain in detail and copying its state into a computer system or another computational device. The computer would have to run a simulation model so faithful to the original that it would behave in essentially the same way as the original brain, or for all practical purposes, indistinguishably.^[19]
• Nanotechnology – study of physical phenomena on the nanoscale, dealing with things measured in nanometres, billionths of a meter. The development of microscopic or molecular machines.
  • Molecular nanotechnology – technology based on the ability to build structures to complex, atomic specifications by means of mechanosynthesis.^[20]
    • Molecular assemblers – as defined by K. Eric Drexler, is a "proposed device able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic precision". Some biological molecules such as ribosomes fit this definition, because they receive instructions from messenger RNA and then assemble specific sequences of amino acids to construct protein molecules. However, the term "molecular assembler" usually refers to theoretical human-made devices ^[21].
• Nootropics – drugs, supplements, nutraceuticals, and functional foods that improve mental functions such as cognition, memory, intelligence, motivation, attention, and concentration.^[22][23] Also referred to as "smart drugs", "brain steroids", "memory enhancers", "cognitive enhancers", "brain boosters", and "intelligence enhancers".
• Organ transplants – moving of an organ from one body to another or from a donor site on the patient's own body, for the purpose of replacing the recipient's damaged or absent organ. The emerging field of regenerative medicine is allowing scientists and engineers to create organs to be re-grown from the patient's own cells (stem cells, or cells extracted from the failing organs).
  • Autograft – organs and/or tissues that are transplanted within the same person's body.
  • Allograft – transplants that are performed between two subjects of the same species.
  • Xenograft – living cells, tissues or organs transplanted from one species to another.
• Personal communicators – Around 1990 the next generation digital mobile phones were called digital personal communicators. Another definition, coined in 1991, is for a category of handheld devices that provide personal information manager functions and packet switched wireless data communications capabilities over wireless wide area networks such as cellular networks. These devices are now commonly referred to as smartphones or wireless PDA's.
• Personal development – includes activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitates employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations. The concept is not limited to self-help, but includes formal and informal activities for developing others, in roles such as teacher, guide, counselor, manager, coach, or mentor. Finally, as personal development takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems that support human development at the individual level in organizations.^[24]
• Powered exoskeleton – powered mobile machine consisting primarily of an exoskeleton-like framework worn by a person and a power supply that supplies at least part of the activation-energy for limb movement. Also known as "powered armor", or "exoframe".
• Prosthetics – artificial device extensions that replace missing body parts.
• Rejuvenation – reversal of aging, which entails the repair of the damage associated with aging, or replacement of damaged tissue with new tissue. Rejuvenation can be a means of life extension, but most life extension strategies do not involve rejuvenation.
• Robotics – design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots. It draws heavily upon electronics, engineering, mechanics mechatronics, and software engineering.
  • Self-replicating machine – artificial construct that is theoretically capable of autonomously manufacturing a copy of itself using raw materials taken from its environment, thus exhibiting self-replication in a way analogous to that found in nature.
• Reprogenetics – merging of reproductive and genetic technologies expected to happen in the near future as techniques like germinal choice technology become more available and more powerful.
• Simulated reality –
• Space colonization – concept of permanent human habitation outside of Earth. Although hypothetical at the present time, there are many proposals and speculations about the first space colony. It is a long-term goal of some national space programs. Also called "space settlement", "space humanization", and "space habitation".
• Suspended animation – slowing of life processes by external means without termination. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold can be used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions. For example, Laina Beasley was kept in suspended animation as a two-celled embryo for 13 years.^[25][26]
• Virtual retinal display – display technology that draws a raster display (like a television) directly onto the retina of the eye. Users see what appears to be a conventional display floating in space in front of them.

History of transhumanism

• Renaissance humanism – cultural and educational reform during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, as a response to the challenge of Mediæval scholastic education, emphasizing practical, pre-professional and -scientific studies. Rather than train professionals in jargon and strict practice, humanists sought to create a citizenry (sometimes including women) able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity.
• Age of Enlightenment – elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state.

Transhumanist concepts

• Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance
• Extropianism – evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition. Extropians believe that advances in science and technology will some day let people live indefinitely. An extropian may wish to contribute to this goal, e.g. by doing research and development or volunteering to test new technology.
• Futures studies – study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. Also called "futurology".
• GNR – denotes the technologies of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.^[27]
• Human condition – the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to gender, race, class, etc.; the experiences of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. Transhumanism aims to radically improve the human condition.
• Human enhancement^[28] –
• Survival –
  • Existential risks – dangers that have the potential to destroy, or drastically restrict, human civilization.^[29] They are distinguished from other forms of risk both by their scope, affecting all of humanity, and severity; destroying or irreversibly crippling the target.
  • Human extinction –
    • Human extinction scenarios –
  • Longevity –
    • Immortality –
    • Indefinite lifespan –
• Megatrajectory – theoretical concept in evolutionary biology that describes paradigmatic developmental stages (major evolutionary milestones) and potential directionality in the evolution of life. A theorized megatrajectory that hasn't occurred yet is postbiological evolution triggered by the emergence of strong AI and several other similarly complex technologies.
• Morphological freedom – proposed civil right of a person to either maintain or modify his or her own body, on his or her own terms, through informed, consensual recourse to, or refusal of, available therapeutic or enabling medical technology.^[30]
• Noosphere – "sphere of human thought".^[31] In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere (sentience) is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life).
• Omega Point – term coined by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) to describe a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving.
• Participant evolution – process of deliberately redesigning the human body and brain using technological means, rather than through the natural processes of mutation and natural selection, with the goal of removing "biological limitations."
  • Procreative beneficence –
  • Procreative liberty –
• Posthumanism –
  • Posthuman^[32] – in transhumanism, it is a hypothetical future being "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards."^[32]
    • Parahuman – human-animal hybrid or chimera. Scientists have done extensive research into the mixing of genes or cells from different species, e.g. adding human (and other animal) genes to bacteria and farm animals to mass-produce insulin and spider silk proteins, and introducing human cells into mouse embryos.
    • Posthuman God – idea that posthumans, being no longer confined to the parameters of human nature, might grow physically and mentally so powerful as to appear god-like by human standards.^[32]
• Post scarcity – hypothetical form of economy or society, in which things such as goods, services and information are free, or practically free. This would be due to an abundance of fundamental resources (matter, energy and intelligence), in conjunction with sophisticated automated systems capable of converting raw materials into finished goods, allowing manufacturing to be as easy as duplicating software.
• Singularitarianism – technocentric ideology and social movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of a superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the Singularity benefits humans.
• Technogaianism – bright green environmentalist stance of active support for the research, development and use of emerging and future technologies to help restore Earth's environment. Technogaians argue that developing safe, clean, alternative technology should be an important goal of environmentalists.^[33]
• Technological convergence – tendency for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks. Convergence can refer to previously separate technologies such as voice (and telephony features), data (and productivity applications), and video that now share resources and interact with each other synergistically.
• Technological singularity – hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. Nevertheless, proponents of the singularity typically anticipate such an event to precede an "intelligence explosion", wherein superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds.
• Technophilia – strong enthusiasm for technology, especially new technologies such as personal computers, the Internet, mobile phones and home cinema. The term is used in sociology when examining the interaction of individuals with their society, especially contrasted with technophobia.
• Techno-utopianism – any ideology based on the belief that advances in science and technology will eventually bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal. A techno-utopia is therefore a hypothetical ideal society, in which laws, government, and social conditions are solely operating for the benefit and well-being of all its citizens, set in the near- or far-future, when advanced science and technology will allow these ideal living standards to exist; for example, post scarcity, transformations in human nature, the abolition of suffering and even the end of death.

Transhumanist organizations

• Alcor Life Extension Foundation – nonprofit company based in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA that researches, advocates for and performs cryonics, the preservation of humans in liquid nitrogen after legal death, in the hope of restoring them to full health when new technology is developed in the future.
• American Cryonics Society
• Applied Foresight Network – global web of university-based centres connected by a network of forums for professors, students, teachers, and concerned citizens. The AFN supports informed discussion and social action on issues of critical importance to the future of humanity.
• Cryonics Institute
• Foresight Institute – nonprofit organization based in Palo Alto, California that promotes transformative technologies. They sponsor conferences on molecular nanotechnology, publish reports, produce a newsletter, and offer several running prizes, including the annual Feynman Prizes given in experimental and theory categories, and the $250,000 Feynman Grand Prize for demonstrating two molecular machines capable of nanoscale positional accuracy and computation.^[34]
• Humanity+ – international non-governmental organization which advocates the ethical use of emerging technologies to enhance human capacities. It was formerly named the "World Transhumanist Association".
• Immortality Institute – nonprofit organisation whose mission is "to conquer the blight of involuntary death". It maintains an online forum for information exchange, has published a book,^[35] produced a film,^[36] has organized three international conferences,^[37] and also sponsors small-scale scientific initiatives.
• Longecity
• Machine Intelligence Research Institute – non-profit organization founded in 2000 (as the "Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence") to develop safe artificial intelligence software, and to raise awareness of both the dangers and potential benefits it believes AI presents. In their view, the potential benefits and risks of a technological singularity necessitate the search for solutions to problems involving AI goal systems to ensure powerful AIs are not dangerous when they are created.^[38][39]
• Mormon Transhumanist Association

Leaders and scholars in transhumanism

Some people who have made a major impact on the advancement of transhumanism:

• Nick Bostrom –
• George Dvorsky –
• Robert Ettinger –
• K. Eric Drexler –
• Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov
• FM-2030 (October 15, 1930, – July 8, 2000) – author, teacher, transhumanist philosopher, futurist, and consultant.^[40] His given name was Fereidoun M. Esfandiary. He became notable as a transhumanist with the book Are You a Transhuman?: Monitoring and Stimulating Your Personal Rate of Growth in a Rapidly Changing World, published in 1989.
• Aubrey de Grey – English author and theoretician in the field of gerontology, and the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation. He is perhaps best known for his view that human beings could, in theory, live to lifespans far in excess of that which any authenticated cases have lived to today.
• James Hughes –
• Julian Huxley –
• Raymond Kurzweil –
• Hans Moravec – adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He is known for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and writings on the impact of technology. Moravec also is a futurist with many of his publications and predictions focusing on transhumanism. Moravec developed techniques in computer vision for determining the region of interest (ROI) in a scene.
• Max More –
• David Pearce – Utilitarian thinker and author of The Hedonistic Imperative, in which he explores the possibility of how technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, pharmacology, and neurosurgery could potentially converge to eliminate all forms of unpleasant experience in human life and produce a posthuman civilization.^[41]
• Giulio Prisco –
• Anders Sandberg – researcher, science debater, futurist, transhumanist, and author born in Solna, Sweden, whose recent contributions include work on cognitive enhancement^[42] (methods, impacts, and policy analysis); a technical roadmap on whole brain emulation;^[43] on neuroethics; and on global catastrophic risks, particularly on the question of how to take into account the subjective uncertainty in risk estimates of low-likelihood, high-consequence risk.^[44]
• Frank J. Tipler –

See also

• Bioethics
• Differential technological development
• Future Shock
• Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
• Life extension
  • Index of topics related to life extension
  • Outline of life extension
• Meaning of life
• Outline of futures studies
• Proactionary Principle
• Transhuman Space
• Transhumanist art
• Transhumanism in fiction

References

External links

Find more about Transhumanism at Wikipedia's sister projects
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Media from Commons
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks
	Learning resources from Wikiversity

• Transhumanism on the Open Directory Project
• Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University