elevul
10-12-2009, 14:11
From X to Ex
Two fundamentally opposed forces are assembling and preparing for a world-changing battle. On one side are those who want to protect humanity from a threat to its very nature. On the other side are those who advocate peaceful coexistence between humanity and what might be termed Homo superior.
Is this a description of the central conflict in the fictional universe(s) of the X-Men? It easily could refer to the struggle between mutants and those who hate and fear them. What I’m referring to, however, is a struggle between the forces of transhumanism, who advocate using science and technology to overcome the physical, cognitive and emotional limitations of the human condition, and the forces of bioconservatism, who oppose biotechnologies that could modify humans in a way they believe threatens the “natural order.” The X-Men mythos considers and dramatizes many of the issues addressed by real-world transhumanism and its critics. Both the fictitious and the factual narratives expect transhumans or posthumans to supersede humans in the imminent future. They differ over the scope and the unfolding of that transition, but it’s not hard to find some intriguing parallels between them.
The “X” in “X-Men” neatly signifies the superhuman nature of the mutant heroes; the X marks their crossing of the boundary that defines the human species. The “trans” in transhumanism has essentially the same function, except that it not only describes a change, it recommends it. Transhumanists are therefore those who favor making the transition from human to posthuman (or, to underscore the parallel, ex-human).
The X-Men have sustained numerous comic book series, from the original X-Men, through Uncanny X-Men, to Ultimate X-Men, New X-Men and all the offshoots along the way. Something about the mutant supers resonates with the spirit of our times. For decades or even centuries, embryonic forms of transhumanism have pushed up small buds of mutated thinking through the hard pavement of human culture. But only in recent years—almost the same years in which the X-Men have risen from the ashes of almost-canceled comic book to become a massive success—has transhumanism matured into a sophisticated philosophy and plan of action discussed everywhere from popular magazines to presidential councils.
Fueling the simultaneous ascent of X and Ex has been a widespread recognition of the unique nature of our times. The transhumanist goals of vastly extending the human life span, augmenting cognitive abilities and reshaping ourselves physically and emotionally have become much harder to dismiss as new technologies—genetics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, intelligence augmentation, artificial intelligence and human-machine interfaces—have emerged and increasingly demonstrated their capabilities and potential.
X and Ex
The deliberate, conscious remaking of the biological, genetic and neurological bases of human nature differs from the accidental mutations that gave birth to the X-Men, but the possible outcomes are hardly less remarkable. The transhumanist agenda includes superlongevity (the removal of natural limits to our life span), technologically augmenting our perceptual range and intellectual capabilities, refining and sculpting our motivational patterns and emotional responses, and mastering our genes to achieve complete choice over bodily form and function and integrating technology into ourselves so as to go beyond biological limitations. On a philosophical level, the core values of transhumanism include perpetual progress, selftransformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction and rational thinking.
Superhuman mutants could also be described as posthumans, although in most cases they are still human in all respects other than their particular mutation. I will occasionally use the term “Ex” to refer to “ex-humans,” that is, humans who have become transhuman or posthuman. “Ex” not only stands for ex-humans and parallels with “X-Men,” but is also the prefix for the main system of transhumanist thought, my philosophy of extropy. Extropy isn’t a technical term but a metaphor for the increasingly more complex and advanced products of evolution, whether the technologically enabled posthumans or the natural mutations that gave rise to humans and, fictitiously, to the X-Men.
The term “transhumanism” has been independently coined several times through the centuries, but I coined and defined it in its modern sense, around the same time that I wrote the first transhumanist statement of principles: the Principles of Extropy. The X-Men may well have been one of several sources that influenced my vision of transhumanism: I was a big fan of the X-Men, beginning with Chris Claremont’s first run. It’s fitting that I, as the founder of the major school of transhumanist thought, always identified most closely with Professor X. I had stopped reading X-Men by the time I earned a Ph.D., but I could hardly avoid ironic amusement when some of my students called me “Prof. Max.”
The character of Professor Charles Xavier—Prof. X—suggests another significant parallel between the universe of the X-Men and the world of transhumanism—between X and Ex. Xavier means, of course, “savior,” the savior of lost, confused and isolated mutants. Prof. X established his school to take in, protect and educate feared and persecuted mutants. He fears that without guidance his young charges will react to the anger and resentment others direct their way by becoming hostile to humans. His school is a haven for gifted misfits and helps them to develop their full potential.
We can see a parallel between Xavier’s role in assembling, protecting and educating mutants and the transhumanist philosophy of extropy and its organizational manifestations, from magazines to conferences to online forums. We originally organized in California, not New York, and we have never owned a jet that we store underground (or, if we do, I’m not telling). In essence, however, Xavier’s school and transhumanist organizations have performed similar functions, especially in the early days of transhumanism.
In the 1980s and ’90s, when we were publishing Extropy: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought, I would hear with remarkable frequency from isolated people who thought in ways that diverged radically from those around them. With each new issue, I would hear from more readers like the fellow in Nebraska who longed to chat about advanced technologies, abolishing aging and death, augmenting intelligence and the like. Attempts to discuss these ideas with those around him would cause them to look at him as if he were an alien … or a mutant. Like Xavier, transhumanism has always emphasized self-improvement, benevolence and cooperative, mutually beneficial social arrangements.
Beyond these commonalities, crucial differences do exist between the two visions of posthumanity. We will notice the most obvious and significant divergence if we look at the origins of X and Ex. A sudden spurt in the natural process of evolution gave rise to superhuman mutants; posthumans will emerge by the deliberate application of technology to enhance the biological, genetic and neurological structure of humans. Notice a crucial feature of this divergence in origins: Homo superior mutants appear all at once, as a race distinct from humanity; posthumanity, by contrast, emerges gradually from humanity as each individual chooses to augment himself or herself one ability or function at a time.
The one-time nature of the mutations that give rise to Homo superior in the X-Men universe implies two other contrasts with the transhumanist vision. Aside from some special cases, the superhuman mutants take the form dictated by a single, exceptional evolutionary leap. Transhumanists, in contrast, take a view of “mutation” as perpetual progress—the continual, technologically enabled selfimprovement and self-refinement of the transhuman person. A person could exceed human capabilities so clearly as to be unarguably posthuman without having arrived at a static state of being.
Not only do mutants result from a single evolutionary leap, their identities—usually even their names—are shaped by the specific powers bestowed by their mutation. Posthumans, as self-transforming creatures, will repeatedly choose their own identities, and shape (or supplant) their genes to reflect those identities, rather than the other way around.
Posthuman Powers
The X-Men display a stunning array of superhuman abilities, from superstrength, invisibility and intangibility to control of weather, moisture and magnetism to mind-reading and thought control. To what extent might real posthumans match—or even exceed—these capabilities?
Wolverine is an especially plausible mutant from the perspective of speculative science and technology. Technologically augmented posthumans could probably duplicate Logan’s powers of strength, speed, sensory acuity, hardened bones (and claws!) and rapid healing. Already, MIT researchers have outlined a way to make robotic, polymer-based muscles that work 1,000 times faster than human muscles.
We will someday be able to replace the human skeletal structure with a system of interconnected nanorobots. If they use artificial diamond as a building material, posthumans will have skulls, spines, arms and legs that are practically unbreakable and uncrushable. If any damage is sustained, these posthuman skeletons will self-repair. Medical nanorobots will take the form of artificial platelets and speed up bleeding control a thousandfold. DNA repair nanorobots and other nanoscale medical devices may move from the design phase to construction phase in only two or three decades.
Assuming Wolverine’s healing factor extends to infections, we could again match the mutant by using “microbivores”—robotic macrophages each two to three microns in size, designed by Nanomedicine author Robert Freitas—to replace our white blood cells and attack pathogens more effectively. These will be upgraded via downloadable software to wipe out particular infections hundreds of times more quickly than antibiotics, eliminating the most severe septicemic infections in minutes to hours. Microbivores also beat out our natural biology in that they will work against all types of infections— fungal, bacterial and viral—as well as cancers, and will not be slowed by bacteria that have developed multiple drug resistance to antibiotics or other familiar therapies.
Once we’ve upgraded to posthuman bodies, our energy-production and mobilizing capabilities would make any mutant proud— maybe even envious. Billions or trillions of artificial red blood cells called “respirocytes” will outperform the originals by a factor of hundreds or thousands. Although respirocytes will look like red blood cells, they will function more like miniscule scuba tanks just one micron in diameter and, if made of sapphire, could store large amounts of oxygen compressed up to about 100,000 atmospheres. By vastly expanding your body’s oxygen-carrying capacity, these respirocytes will allow you to run all out at Olympic speeds (or swim at full speed underwater) for fifteen minutes without taking a breath. In the absence of such strenuous exertion, respirocytes would allow you to survive without breathing for several hours.
Organs, especially the heart, will certainly be replaced in the future. Going beyond supplementing the blood with nanorobotic blood cells, Freitas has designed a 500 trillion nanorobot system, a “vasculoid,” to replace the entire bloodstream. Researchers have already developed early-stage microscale and nanoscale fuel cells. Posthuman bodies may be powered by tiny fuel cells running on hydrogen or our bodies’ native ATP.
The lungs are also a good candidate for replacement. During an intermediate phase we will supplement our biological oxygenation system with respirocytes. As we move on to a real posthuman stage, we’re likely to eliminate lungs entirely—along with breathing itself— and replace them with nanorobots. Most of our other organs will also be replaced or made unnecessary. In the case of a posthuman, neither a pulse nor breathing will be a reliable sign of life.
This ability to change the form and function of our bodies—what transhumanists often call “morphological freedom”—applies just as well to more prosaic matters. Consider that we don’t often see the X-Men eating. Of course that’s because watching superheroes eat isn’t that thrilling; it’s not because they don’t need to. But posthumans really won’t need to eat, at least not in any sense we recognize today. In place of food, we will introduce exactly the nutrients we need into our bodies, then metabolic nanorobots, guided by sensors and wireless communication, will transport them precisely where and when they are needed for optimal functioning.
Unbreakable bones, superstrong muscles, an invincible immune and self-repair system—these are all great things to have, but Wolverine wouldn’t be Wolverine if not for his enhanced senses. Although popular fiction has often portrayed future humans as entirely cerebral creatures, almost totally devoid of sensory engagement with the world, real posthumans are likely to resemble Weapon X in this regard. Researchers have already developed an “artificial nose” that may have a better sense of smell than a bloodhound. This device uses chemical sensors to sniff out explosives, food contaminants and various other chemicals, and may be able to diagnose certain medical conditions by smell.
We might also use terahertz rays (T-rays)—a curious form of emission found between infrared and microwaves—to see through clothing, plastic and packaging to spot explosives, guns or even biological weapons much more effectively than we could using optical, infrared or x-ray imaging. As we increasingly merge our machines and technologies with the human body, we can expect our existing senses to be sharpened and new senses to be added through interfaces with mechanical sensors.
The technologies emerging over the next few decades will confer on posthumans many other mutant-matching capabilities. The ability to make real-time modifications in our appearance in high-resolution, full-immersion virtual reality will make us comfortable with shape-shifters. That will prepare us for the posthuman ability to change form at will in physical reality, once we have fully incorporated nanotech into ourselves. If we convert at least part of our physical embodiment into a swarm of interlocking devices known as “foglets,” our physical bodies will be almost as configurable as virtual bodies. Foglets are a form of “programmable matter” that can take almost any form, from soft and permeable to as hard-yet-mutable as Colossus’ “organic steel” body.
Posthumans begin to truly outshine mutants in potential if we shift focus from physical enhancements to enhancements in the realms of longevity, psychology and intellect. X-Men seem not to have extended life spans. One of the few clear exceptions is Wolverine, whose regenerative powers have maintained his biological age over decades. One of the major shifts we will experience in the transition from human to posthuman will be the abolition of aging and death. A growing number of scientists think this could happen in the lifetimes of some of now living.
We will achieve something like immortality, not in one great leap forward but in baby steps. What we need to do is stay alive to ride the wave of accelerating longevity. Life expectancy keeps growing and should continue to do so at an ever-faster pace. We will live indefinitely once biomedical advances extend our lives by at least one year each year. At that point, we will have reached longevity escape velocity (LEV). Three crucial factors underlie the driving forces bringing us closer to forever: the stunning and unceasing success of the scientific method; instruments that see further, deeper and more precisely; and the cross-fertilization of information technology and biotechnology, creating new capabilities in areas like genomics and drug design.
When might we attain LEV? Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey has mapped out the challenge in detail. He estimates reaching LEV in fifteen to a hundred years, with twenty-five years as his best guess. To move the odds in his favor, de Grey instituted the Methuselah Mouse Prize, an award that may have the same effect on achieving LEV as the Ansari X Prize had on the more familiar kind of escape velocity in the case of private space launches.
Maximum Headroom
The mutant universe of the X-Men also lacks any solid evidence of emotional evolution. As Sabretooth puts it: “Super-people are supposed to be the next stage in human evolution, and all we do is fight each other.” Popular portrayals of superhumans typically play on their incredible physical abilities—usually their destructive capabilities. In reality, it might take only a relatively modest genetic mutation (or technologically engineered neurological modification) to give us superhuman emotional responses.
In the human brain, there are plenty of neuronal connections following a path from the amygdala (the emotional center of the brain) to the cortex (the cognitive region). The amygdala’s many projections into cortical areas greatly outnumber the pathways from the cortex to the amygdala. The amygdala uses its evolutionarily developed defense networks to influence attention, perception and memory, meaning that, in situations where we believe we are facing danger, emotional arousal can dominate and control thinking. These unbalanced connections in the brain are true of all mammals, and they make it rather hard to consciously and deliberately turn off emotions by shutting down the amygdala.
It turns out, however, that primates have far more cortical connections to the amygdala than do other mammals. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that we might put neurotechnology to work in building new pathways in the other direction, bringing the connections into balance. In posthumans, rather than reason and passion working separately, we might integrate them to achieve a harmonious modulation of emotions. As a result, we might end up altering the emotional responses—even the basic drives—imbued in us by the imperatives of our genes. Real risks exist in messing around with our fundamental makeup, yes, but enormously positive possibilities aren’t hard to envision either.
Contrary to stereotyped popular portrayals of future humans as dryly cerebral beings, posthumans will have the means to better integrate their feelings and automatic responses with their conscious values and ideal self-image. Rather than crushing our emotions, we will carve them, making them more mature, reworking undesirable feelings into ones fitting our values and sense of our true self. The mark of the posthuman will not only be an augmented body and brain but more highly evolved emotions.
The means by which we will shape mood and modify personality will include hormonal manipulation, psychoactive drugs, genetic engineering of neural tissue, computerized inner assistants and biochemical implants, all combined with the “soft” technologies of introspection and meditation. We can expect to apply those ubiquitous nanorobots to make direct modifications of brain structure in order to achieve more drastic transformations of our psychological nature, and hardwired neurological modifications (or “mods”) might allow us to bring errant desires into line with our deeper values, such as by totally abolishing the desire to engage in a self-destructive habit. They might make it much easier for us to fall into a state of attention rather than distraction, energetic optimism rather than depression, calm confidence rather than anxiety and deep interpersonal awareness rather than self-absorption.
Exotic new emotions and personalities unimaginable to the humans of today will await new posthuman brains capable of thinking thoughts as different from ours as differential calculus or philosophical awe differs from the emotional range of other mammals. As cognitive psychologists have shown, the particular nature of our emotions is shaped by the thoughts underlying them. Strange new emotions will be aroused by strange new thoughts. One path to a posthuman persona might be to deliberately and carefully divide an individual mind into multiple personas or partial personalities, converting the individual into a close-knit community of mind, as Walter Jon Williams envisaged in his novel Aristoi.
Another thing almost completely missing in the X-Men version of posthumanity is cognitive augmentation. By this I don’t mean heightened sensory capabilities, or mentalistic or psychic augmentation; I mean intellectual, conceptual, analytical and creative abilities that exceed the bounds of human possibility. X-Men’s really smart mutants seem to be no brighter than the most intelligent Homo sapiens. We don’t see genuinely superbright mutants for an entirely understandable reason: it’s incredibly hard to portray plausibly. How can a sharp but non-genius human writer come up with believable thoughts for a superhumanly intelligent being? He can’t. The next best approach is to leave the superbright being in the shadows, its thinking processes shrouded in mystery with only the effects being seen.
We should expect cognitive augmentation to be a major goal for posthumans if for no other reason than that it’s tremendously advantageous to be hyperintelligent. As Xavier said in Ultimate X-Men #13, “Post-human problems require post-human solutions.” Some people are already taking early kinds of “smart drugs” (or “nootropics”) to sharpen their concentration or memory. It’s not too hard to see us using biological, genomic or nanotechnological means to upgrade our intellectual faculties. For instance, we might stimulate growth in the hippocampus in order to expand our “working memory.” That would allow us to engage in far more complex chains of reasoning without losing our way.
Software agents and “knowbots” embedded in the brain will help posthumans to gather information, relieving them of tedious work hunting down and managing information. Early-stage artificial retinas and cochlear implants are already in use, and other brain implants using “neuromorphic” designs that learn from nature are in the early stages of development. The Max Planck Institute’s “neuron transistor” and other achievements in linking biological neuron to field effect transistors point to a day when our computers will be tightly integrated with our brains, becoming part of us, abolishing barriers to the attainment of posthuman intelligence.
Where lie the ultimate limits to posthuman intelligence? Currently, we’re doing all our thinking with a hundred trillion neurons that communicate using sluggish electrochemical processes. Several estimates put the computational power of the human brain at around 1014 to 1016 calculations per second (cps). Posthuman memory based on nanorobot communication will be millions of times faster, but that still leaves us very far from the ultimate limits for computational power, even allowing for limits imposed by power requirements, error- correction and so on.
How far away? That theoretical limit can be calculated by dividing the total energy of an object by Planck’s constant. MIT professor Seth Lloyd has figured that one kilogram of matter (about the amount in a human brain) could support about 5 x 1050 operations per second. It’s rather silly to represent this in words, but for the mathematically challenged, that number translates to five times 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion. If human intelligence can be emulated with 1016 cps, that would mean that an object the size of the brain could, at its theoretical ultimate, boast cognitive power equivalent to five trillion trillion human civilizations.
Even if we reduce this estimate conservatively by a factor of 10 million, Ray Kurzweil has calculated that the ultimate computerbrain could “perform the equivalent of all human thought over the last ten thousand years in no more than ten microseconds.” Kurzweil has also estimated, based on remarkably stable long-run trends, that we may be able to buy this amount of computing power for $1000 around 2080. Nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler has patented a far more modest and conservative computer design using entirely mechanical components. Even this device should be able to simulate 100,000 human brains in a cubic centimeter.
What will all this accelerated evolution in physical, intellectual and emotional capabilities mean for the unity of human society? Will only some individuals and some countries acquire posthuman powers and status while others remain human? Will that lead to a conflict between humans and posthumans akin to that between humans and mutants in the X-Men stories? Or might the conflict be real, but cut across lines differently than in the X-Men universe? Answering those questions takes us into our last comparison of X and Ex.
The Tomorrow Wars
n the X-Men universe, Magneto is intent on dominating humanity and forcibly replacing the species with himself and favored members of Homo superior. At the height of his megalomania, Magneto declared to a frightened planet that in his mutant utopia, humans would become food, fuel or slaves to their new masters. The Master of Magnetism despises and resents human beings, while many humans fear and hate mutants. Charles Xavier has chosen the far more benevolent path of integrating the two species, but despite their radical differences, both leaders share an assumption that may be true in the X-Men universe but will not be true in the real posthuman future.
Xavier and Magneto assume a sharp distinction between humans and mutants: either you possess the X-gene or you don’t. Even in their world, that division is a little too neat. Some individuals don’t fit comfortably in either box. Superpeople without the X-gene (such as the Ultimates) form a third group. And what about those such as Tony Stark, who can step into a suit of high-tech armor and become the powerful superhero Iron Man? If Stark were to internalize the Iron Man technology through further miniaturization, he would become a true cyborg—one kind of genuine posthuman being.
Fears of conflict arise from this assumption of a radical divide, whether it’s between humans and mutants or humans and posthumans. Wars are more difficult to wage when you’re not sure who is on which side. Even with the qualifications I’ve suggested, the sides are clear enough in the X-Men world to make it entirely understandable why anyone who isn’t a mutant would worry about the evolutionary leap. All the evidence suggests that the transhuman transition will be a different matter. Consider just two points in this respect: the move from human to posthuman will not be an all-or-nothing, us-versusthem affair; and there will be forces other than human and posthuman to complicate the picture.
As I noted in the first section, posthumanity will emerge gradually out of humanity as each of us chooses whether and how to augment ourselves, one function at a time. Instead of a single, world-shaking jump to a new level of being, the transition will consist of a small cognitive upgrade here, a perceptual augmentation there, additional years added to life expectancy and so on. Superhumanity will arrive in small steps.
It seems likely that transhuman enhancements will be widely adopted, with some being almost universal (core cognitive upgrades, for example) and others more limited and specialized (specific perceptual upgrades, environmental toughening). We will see a wide spectrum of posthuman capabilities at varying levels of advancement. Some cultures may even choose to adopt certain enhancements but stand firm against others—just as the Amish allow technologies such as the cell phone that they find compatible with their culture, but don’t allow fixed telephones or televisions. We might think of those who upgrade some abilities while refusing to move beyond a certain level on others as the “humanish.”
Another factor that makes the picture of human-posthuman conflict implausible is artificial superintelligence. The simple scenario of a two-sided conflict splinters when we consider AI as a third force. At least one of the X-Men writers has noticed this, as indicated by these words spoken in Ultimate X-Men #25 by Mr. Seville of the Hellfire Club, in reference to an article handed out by Xavier: “Oh, just some stupid article from the London Times. It’s a piece by Stephen Hawking about mutants being man’s last hope against the evolution of artificial intelligence.”
We cannot yet be sure whether AI will be friendly, hostile or indifferent toward humans and posthumans—or all three, depending on its manifestation. Further, machine intelligence is likely to often take the form not of an independent AI but of participatory superintelligence— IA (intelligence augmentation) rather than AI. This will be participatory both in the sense that we work together with the thinking technology, and in the sense that anyone will be able to tap into it in order to work together, just as we are doing already with the Internet.
If the future isn’t likely to be shaped by a conflict as simple and clear as human versus posthuman, another conflict is more likely. Indeed, it has already begun. This is the ideological and cultural battle we can see developing between pro-posthumans (transhumanists) and anti-posthumans. The Senator Kellys and the William Strykers of the X-Men world seek to stamp out “the mutant menace”—even if that means using dangerous tools such as the Sentinels. Similarly, the anti-posthumans, now known as the bioconservatives, seek to block the transhuman transition—even if that means banning whole lines of technology or prohibiting the pursuit of knowledge.
In “The Red-Green Divide Over Human Enhancement,” journalist Jim Pethokoukis notes that “it is surprising how often talk of the X-Men comes up” when he speaks with enhancement advocates such as transhumanists. He no longer thinks such a metaphor is over the top since he heard “bioethicist George Annas, who favors a ban on enhancement technologies like germline engineering, stat[ing] that such laws are needed precisely to prevent ‘a group of super individuals who view us as defective from subjecting us to their genetic genocide.’”
Annas is far from alone in this. For its September/October 2004 issue, the editors of Foreign Policy posed the following question to eight prominent policy intellectuals: “What ideas, if embraced, would pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity?” One of the eight wise men was Francis Fukuyama, who made his name with the book The End of History before following up with Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Fukuyama’s choice for the world’s most dangerous idea was transhumanism, which he identified as “a strange liberation movement” that wants “nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints.” Fukuyama based his view on the threat to “Factor X” (no joke), a term that appears to stand for some idea of the human essence or soul.
The combatants in this brewing battle for the future of the human species will not be familiar, preexisting groups aligned with the usual political factions. This existential-technological-political conflict is already bringing together strange bedfellows on the bioconservative side: precautionary principle-wielding “left” environmentalists are joining forces with religious conservatives; former Sun Microsystems chief scientist Bill Joy has joined longtime technocritic Jeremy Rifkin in attempting to restrict genetic, nano- and robotic technologies; and self-described “liberal” (anticorporate) humanists are marching in step with reactionaries who care little for humanistic heresies.
We transhumanists are not the utopians critics like to accuse us of being. We fully expect the future to be disturbed by challenges, conflicts and troubles—although perhaps on a higher level than those of today’s monkey politics. Given the probable nature of emerging posthumanity, however, I think we can expect the struggles of ex-men to be at least as engaging as those of the X-Men. With a little luck and some personal effort to reach longevity escape velocity, many of us may be around to contribute to the plot.
MAX MORE, PH.D.
http://www.smartpopbooks.com/essay/full/279
Una bellissima panoramica di ciò che possiamo aspettarci dallo sviluppo della tecnologia relativamente al potenziamento umano.
Two fundamentally opposed forces are assembling and preparing for a world-changing battle. On one side are those who want to protect humanity from a threat to its very nature. On the other side are those who advocate peaceful coexistence between humanity and what might be termed Homo superior.
Is this a description of the central conflict in the fictional universe(s) of the X-Men? It easily could refer to the struggle between mutants and those who hate and fear them. What I’m referring to, however, is a struggle between the forces of transhumanism, who advocate using science and technology to overcome the physical, cognitive and emotional limitations of the human condition, and the forces of bioconservatism, who oppose biotechnologies that could modify humans in a way they believe threatens the “natural order.” The X-Men mythos considers and dramatizes many of the issues addressed by real-world transhumanism and its critics. Both the fictitious and the factual narratives expect transhumans or posthumans to supersede humans in the imminent future. They differ over the scope and the unfolding of that transition, but it’s not hard to find some intriguing parallels between them.
The “X” in “X-Men” neatly signifies the superhuman nature of the mutant heroes; the X marks their crossing of the boundary that defines the human species. The “trans” in transhumanism has essentially the same function, except that it not only describes a change, it recommends it. Transhumanists are therefore those who favor making the transition from human to posthuman (or, to underscore the parallel, ex-human).
The X-Men have sustained numerous comic book series, from the original X-Men, through Uncanny X-Men, to Ultimate X-Men, New X-Men and all the offshoots along the way. Something about the mutant supers resonates with the spirit of our times. For decades or even centuries, embryonic forms of transhumanism have pushed up small buds of mutated thinking through the hard pavement of human culture. But only in recent years—almost the same years in which the X-Men have risen from the ashes of almost-canceled comic book to become a massive success—has transhumanism matured into a sophisticated philosophy and plan of action discussed everywhere from popular magazines to presidential councils.
Fueling the simultaneous ascent of X and Ex has been a widespread recognition of the unique nature of our times. The transhumanist goals of vastly extending the human life span, augmenting cognitive abilities and reshaping ourselves physically and emotionally have become much harder to dismiss as new technologies—genetics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, intelligence augmentation, artificial intelligence and human-machine interfaces—have emerged and increasingly demonstrated their capabilities and potential.
X and Ex
The deliberate, conscious remaking of the biological, genetic and neurological bases of human nature differs from the accidental mutations that gave birth to the X-Men, but the possible outcomes are hardly less remarkable. The transhumanist agenda includes superlongevity (the removal of natural limits to our life span), technologically augmenting our perceptual range and intellectual capabilities, refining and sculpting our motivational patterns and emotional responses, and mastering our genes to achieve complete choice over bodily form and function and integrating technology into ourselves so as to go beyond biological limitations. On a philosophical level, the core values of transhumanism include perpetual progress, selftransformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction and rational thinking.
Superhuman mutants could also be described as posthumans, although in most cases they are still human in all respects other than their particular mutation. I will occasionally use the term “Ex” to refer to “ex-humans,” that is, humans who have become transhuman or posthuman. “Ex” not only stands for ex-humans and parallels with “X-Men,” but is also the prefix for the main system of transhumanist thought, my philosophy of extropy. Extropy isn’t a technical term but a metaphor for the increasingly more complex and advanced products of evolution, whether the technologically enabled posthumans or the natural mutations that gave rise to humans and, fictitiously, to the X-Men.
The term “transhumanism” has been independently coined several times through the centuries, but I coined and defined it in its modern sense, around the same time that I wrote the first transhumanist statement of principles: the Principles of Extropy. The X-Men may well have been one of several sources that influenced my vision of transhumanism: I was a big fan of the X-Men, beginning with Chris Claremont’s first run. It’s fitting that I, as the founder of the major school of transhumanist thought, always identified most closely with Professor X. I had stopped reading X-Men by the time I earned a Ph.D., but I could hardly avoid ironic amusement when some of my students called me “Prof. Max.”
The character of Professor Charles Xavier—Prof. X—suggests another significant parallel between the universe of the X-Men and the world of transhumanism—between X and Ex. Xavier means, of course, “savior,” the savior of lost, confused and isolated mutants. Prof. X established his school to take in, protect and educate feared and persecuted mutants. He fears that without guidance his young charges will react to the anger and resentment others direct their way by becoming hostile to humans. His school is a haven for gifted misfits and helps them to develop their full potential.
We can see a parallel between Xavier’s role in assembling, protecting and educating mutants and the transhumanist philosophy of extropy and its organizational manifestations, from magazines to conferences to online forums. We originally organized in California, not New York, and we have never owned a jet that we store underground (or, if we do, I’m not telling). In essence, however, Xavier’s school and transhumanist organizations have performed similar functions, especially in the early days of transhumanism.
In the 1980s and ’90s, when we were publishing Extropy: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought, I would hear with remarkable frequency from isolated people who thought in ways that diverged radically from those around them. With each new issue, I would hear from more readers like the fellow in Nebraska who longed to chat about advanced technologies, abolishing aging and death, augmenting intelligence and the like. Attempts to discuss these ideas with those around him would cause them to look at him as if he were an alien … or a mutant. Like Xavier, transhumanism has always emphasized self-improvement, benevolence and cooperative, mutually beneficial social arrangements.
Beyond these commonalities, crucial differences do exist between the two visions of posthumanity. We will notice the most obvious and significant divergence if we look at the origins of X and Ex. A sudden spurt in the natural process of evolution gave rise to superhuman mutants; posthumans will emerge by the deliberate application of technology to enhance the biological, genetic and neurological structure of humans. Notice a crucial feature of this divergence in origins: Homo superior mutants appear all at once, as a race distinct from humanity; posthumanity, by contrast, emerges gradually from humanity as each individual chooses to augment himself or herself one ability or function at a time.
The one-time nature of the mutations that give rise to Homo superior in the X-Men universe implies two other contrasts with the transhumanist vision. Aside from some special cases, the superhuman mutants take the form dictated by a single, exceptional evolutionary leap. Transhumanists, in contrast, take a view of “mutation” as perpetual progress—the continual, technologically enabled selfimprovement and self-refinement of the transhuman person. A person could exceed human capabilities so clearly as to be unarguably posthuman without having arrived at a static state of being.
Not only do mutants result from a single evolutionary leap, their identities—usually even their names—are shaped by the specific powers bestowed by their mutation. Posthumans, as self-transforming creatures, will repeatedly choose their own identities, and shape (or supplant) their genes to reflect those identities, rather than the other way around.
Posthuman Powers
The X-Men display a stunning array of superhuman abilities, from superstrength, invisibility and intangibility to control of weather, moisture and magnetism to mind-reading and thought control. To what extent might real posthumans match—or even exceed—these capabilities?
Wolverine is an especially plausible mutant from the perspective of speculative science and technology. Technologically augmented posthumans could probably duplicate Logan’s powers of strength, speed, sensory acuity, hardened bones (and claws!) and rapid healing. Already, MIT researchers have outlined a way to make robotic, polymer-based muscles that work 1,000 times faster than human muscles.
We will someday be able to replace the human skeletal structure with a system of interconnected nanorobots. If they use artificial diamond as a building material, posthumans will have skulls, spines, arms and legs that are practically unbreakable and uncrushable. If any damage is sustained, these posthuman skeletons will self-repair. Medical nanorobots will take the form of artificial platelets and speed up bleeding control a thousandfold. DNA repair nanorobots and other nanoscale medical devices may move from the design phase to construction phase in only two or three decades.
Assuming Wolverine’s healing factor extends to infections, we could again match the mutant by using “microbivores”—robotic macrophages each two to three microns in size, designed by Nanomedicine author Robert Freitas—to replace our white blood cells and attack pathogens more effectively. These will be upgraded via downloadable software to wipe out particular infections hundreds of times more quickly than antibiotics, eliminating the most severe septicemic infections in minutes to hours. Microbivores also beat out our natural biology in that they will work against all types of infections— fungal, bacterial and viral—as well as cancers, and will not be slowed by bacteria that have developed multiple drug resistance to antibiotics or other familiar therapies.
Once we’ve upgraded to posthuman bodies, our energy-production and mobilizing capabilities would make any mutant proud— maybe even envious. Billions or trillions of artificial red blood cells called “respirocytes” will outperform the originals by a factor of hundreds or thousands. Although respirocytes will look like red blood cells, they will function more like miniscule scuba tanks just one micron in diameter and, if made of sapphire, could store large amounts of oxygen compressed up to about 100,000 atmospheres. By vastly expanding your body’s oxygen-carrying capacity, these respirocytes will allow you to run all out at Olympic speeds (or swim at full speed underwater) for fifteen minutes without taking a breath. In the absence of such strenuous exertion, respirocytes would allow you to survive without breathing for several hours.
Organs, especially the heart, will certainly be replaced in the future. Going beyond supplementing the blood with nanorobotic blood cells, Freitas has designed a 500 trillion nanorobot system, a “vasculoid,” to replace the entire bloodstream. Researchers have already developed early-stage microscale and nanoscale fuel cells. Posthuman bodies may be powered by tiny fuel cells running on hydrogen or our bodies’ native ATP.
The lungs are also a good candidate for replacement. During an intermediate phase we will supplement our biological oxygenation system with respirocytes. As we move on to a real posthuman stage, we’re likely to eliminate lungs entirely—along with breathing itself— and replace them with nanorobots. Most of our other organs will also be replaced or made unnecessary. In the case of a posthuman, neither a pulse nor breathing will be a reliable sign of life.
This ability to change the form and function of our bodies—what transhumanists often call “morphological freedom”—applies just as well to more prosaic matters. Consider that we don’t often see the X-Men eating. Of course that’s because watching superheroes eat isn’t that thrilling; it’s not because they don’t need to. But posthumans really won’t need to eat, at least not in any sense we recognize today. In place of food, we will introduce exactly the nutrients we need into our bodies, then metabolic nanorobots, guided by sensors and wireless communication, will transport them precisely where and when they are needed for optimal functioning.
Unbreakable bones, superstrong muscles, an invincible immune and self-repair system—these are all great things to have, but Wolverine wouldn’t be Wolverine if not for his enhanced senses. Although popular fiction has often portrayed future humans as entirely cerebral creatures, almost totally devoid of sensory engagement with the world, real posthumans are likely to resemble Weapon X in this regard. Researchers have already developed an “artificial nose” that may have a better sense of smell than a bloodhound. This device uses chemical sensors to sniff out explosives, food contaminants and various other chemicals, and may be able to diagnose certain medical conditions by smell.
We might also use terahertz rays (T-rays)—a curious form of emission found between infrared and microwaves—to see through clothing, plastic and packaging to spot explosives, guns or even biological weapons much more effectively than we could using optical, infrared or x-ray imaging. As we increasingly merge our machines and technologies with the human body, we can expect our existing senses to be sharpened and new senses to be added through interfaces with mechanical sensors.
The technologies emerging over the next few decades will confer on posthumans many other mutant-matching capabilities. The ability to make real-time modifications in our appearance in high-resolution, full-immersion virtual reality will make us comfortable with shape-shifters. That will prepare us for the posthuman ability to change form at will in physical reality, once we have fully incorporated nanotech into ourselves. If we convert at least part of our physical embodiment into a swarm of interlocking devices known as “foglets,” our physical bodies will be almost as configurable as virtual bodies. Foglets are a form of “programmable matter” that can take almost any form, from soft and permeable to as hard-yet-mutable as Colossus’ “organic steel” body.
Posthumans begin to truly outshine mutants in potential if we shift focus from physical enhancements to enhancements in the realms of longevity, psychology and intellect. X-Men seem not to have extended life spans. One of the few clear exceptions is Wolverine, whose regenerative powers have maintained his biological age over decades. One of the major shifts we will experience in the transition from human to posthuman will be the abolition of aging and death. A growing number of scientists think this could happen in the lifetimes of some of now living.
We will achieve something like immortality, not in one great leap forward but in baby steps. What we need to do is stay alive to ride the wave of accelerating longevity. Life expectancy keeps growing and should continue to do so at an ever-faster pace. We will live indefinitely once biomedical advances extend our lives by at least one year each year. At that point, we will have reached longevity escape velocity (LEV). Three crucial factors underlie the driving forces bringing us closer to forever: the stunning and unceasing success of the scientific method; instruments that see further, deeper and more precisely; and the cross-fertilization of information technology and biotechnology, creating new capabilities in areas like genomics and drug design.
When might we attain LEV? Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey has mapped out the challenge in detail. He estimates reaching LEV in fifteen to a hundred years, with twenty-five years as his best guess. To move the odds in his favor, de Grey instituted the Methuselah Mouse Prize, an award that may have the same effect on achieving LEV as the Ansari X Prize had on the more familiar kind of escape velocity in the case of private space launches.
Maximum Headroom
The mutant universe of the X-Men also lacks any solid evidence of emotional evolution. As Sabretooth puts it: “Super-people are supposed to be the next stage in human evolution, and all we do is fight each other.” Popular portrayals of superhumans typically play on their incredible physical abilities—usually their destructive capabilities. In reality, it might take only a relatively modest genetic mutation (or technologically engineered neurological modification) to give us superhuman emotional responses.
In the human brain, there are plenty of neuronal connections following a path from the amygdala (the emotional center of the brain) to the cortex (the cognitive region). The amygdala’s many projections into cortical areas greatly outnumber the pathways from the cortex to the amygdala. The amygdala uses its evolutionarily developed defense networks to influence attention, perception and memory, meaning that, in situations where we believe we are facing danger, emotional arousal can dominate and control thinking. These unbalanced connections in the brain are true of all mammals, and they make it rather hard to consciously and deliberately turn off emotions by shutting down the amygdala.
It turns out, however, that primates have far more cortical connections to the amygdala than do other mammals. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that we might put neurotechnology to work in building new pathways in the other direction, bringing the connections into balance. In posthumans, rather than reason and passion working separately, we might integrate them to achieve a harmonious modulation of emotions. As a result, we might end up altering the emotional responses—even the basic drives—imbued in us by the imperatives of our genes. Real risks exist in messing around with our fundamental makeup, yes, but enormously positive possibilities aren’t hard to envision either.
Contrary to stereotyped popular portrayals of future humans as dryly cerebral beings, posthumans will have the means to better integrate their feelings and automatic responses with their conscious values and ideal self-image. Rather than crushing our emotions, we will carve them, making them more mature, reworking undesirable feelings into ones fitting our values and sense of our true self. The mark of the posthuman will not only be an augmented body and brain but more highly evolved emotions.
The means by which we will shape mood and modify personality will include hormonal manipulation, psychoactive drugs, genetic engineering of neural tissue, computerized inner assistants and biochemical implants, all combined with the “soft” technologies of introspection and meditation. We can expect to apply those ubiquitous nanorobots to make direct modifications of brain structure in order to achieve more drastic transformations of our psychological nature, and hardwired neurological modifications (or “mods”) might allow us to bring errant desires into line with our deeper values, such as by totally abolishing the desire to engage in a self-destructive habit. They might make it much easier for us to fall into a state of attention rather than distraction, energetic optimism rather than depression, calm confidence rather than anxiety and deep interpersonal awareness rather than self-absorption.
Exotic new emotions and personalities unimaginable to the humans of today will await new posthuman brains capable of thinking thoughts as different from ours as differential calculus or philosophical awe differs from the emotional range of other mammals. As cognitive psychologists have shown, the particular nature of our emotions is shaped by the thoughts underlying them. Strange new emotions will be aroused by strange new thoughts. One path to a posthuman persona might be to deliberately and carefully divide an individual mind into multiple personas or partial personalities, converting the individual into a close-knit community of mind, as Walter Jon Williams envisaged in his novel Aristoi.
Another thing almost completely missing in the X-Men version of posthumanity is cognitive augmentation. By this I don’t mean heightened sensory capabilities, or mentalistic or psychic augmentation; I mean intellectual, conceptual, analytical and creative abilities that exceed the bounds of human possibility. X-Men’s really smart mutants seem to be no brighter than the most intelligent Homo sapiens. We don’t see genuinely superbright mutants for an entirely understandable reason: it’s incredibly hard to portray plausibly. How can a sharp but non-genius human writer come up with believable thoughts for a superhumanly intelligent being? He can’t. The next best approach is to leave the superbright being in the shadows, its thinking processes shrouded in mystery with only the effects being seen.
We should expect cognitive augmentation to be a major goal for posthumans if for no other reason than that it’s tremendously advantageous to be hyperintelligent. As Xavier said in Ultimate X-Men #13, “Post-human problems require post-human solutions.” Some people are already taking early kinds of “smart drugs” (or “nootropics”) to sharpen their concentration or memory. It’s not too hard to see us using biological, genomic or nanotechnological means to upgrade our intellectual faculties. For instance, we might stimulate growth in the hippocampus in order to expand our “working memory.” That would allow us to engage in far more complex chains of reasoning without losing our way.
Software agents and “knowbots” embedded in the brain will help posthumans to gather information, relieving them of tedious work hunting down and managing information. Early-stage artificial retinas and cochlear implants are already in use, and other brain implants using “neuromorphic” designs that learn from nature are in the early stages of development. The Max Planck Institute’s “neuron transistor” and other achievements in linking biological neuron to field effect transistors point to a day when our computers will be tightly integrated with our brains, becoming part of us, abolishing barriers to the attainment of posthuman intelligence.
Where lie the ultimate limits to posthuman intelligence? Currently, we’re doing all our thinking with a hundred trillion neurons that communicate using sluggish electrochemical processes. Several estimates put the computational power of the human brain at around 1014 to 1016 calculations per second (cps). Posthuman memory based on nanorobot communication will be millions of times faster, but that still leaves us very far from the ultimate limits for computational power, even allowing for limits imposed by power requirements, error- correction and so on.
How far away? That theoretical limit can be calculated by dividing the total energy of an object by Planck’s constant. MIT professor Seth Lloyd has figured that one kilogram of matter (about the amount in a human brain) could support about 5 x 1050 operations per second. It’s rather silly to represent this in words, but for the mathematically challenged, that number translates to five times 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion. If human intelligence can be emulated with 1016 cps, that would mean that an object the size of the brain could, at its theoretical ultimate, boast cognitive power equivalent to five trillion trillion human civilizations.
Even if we reduce this estimate conservatively by a factor of 10 million, Ray Kurzweil has calculated that the ultimate computerbrain could “perform the equivalent of all human thought over the last ten thousand years in no more than ten microseconds.” Kurzweil has also estimated, based on remarkably stable long-run trends, that we may be able to buy this amount of computing power for $1000 around 2080. Nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler has patented a far more modest and conservative computer design using entirely mechanical components. Even this device should be able to simulate 100,000 human brains in a cubic centimeter.
What will all this accelerated evolution in physical, intellectual and emotional capabilities mean for the unity of human society? Will only some individuals and some countries acquire posthuman powers and status while others remain human? Will that lead to a conflict between humans and posthumans akin to that between humans and mutants in the X-Men stories? Or might the conflict be real, but cut across lines differently than in the X-Men universe? Answering those questions takes us into our last comparison of X and Ex.
The Tomorrow Wars
n the X-Men universe, Magneto is intent on dominating humanity and forcibly replacing the species with himself and favored members of Homo superior. At the height of his megalomania, Magneto declared to a frightened planet that in his mutant utopia, humans would become food, fuel or slaves to their new masters. The Master of Magnetism despises and resents human beings, while many humans fear and hate mutants. Charles Xavier has chosen the far more benevolent path of integrating the two species, but despite their radical differences, both leaders share an assumption that may be true in the X-Men universe but will not be true in the real posthuman future.
Xavier and Magneto assume a sharp distinction between humans and mutants: either you possess the X-gene or you don’t. Even in their world, that division is a little too neat. Some individuals don’t fit comfortably in either box. Superpeople without the X-gene (such as the Ultimates) form a third group. And what about those such as Tony Stark, who can step into a suit of high-tech armor and become the powerful superhero Iron Man? If Stark were to internalize the Iron Man technology through further miniaturization, he would become a true cyborg—one kind of genuine posthuman being.
Fears of conflict arise from this assumption of a radical divide, whether it’s between humans and mutants or humans and posthumans. Wars are more difficult to wage when you’re not sure who is on which side. Even with the qualifications I’ve suggested, the sides are clear enough in the X-Men world to make it entirely understandable why anyone who isn’t a mutant would worry about the evolutionary leap. All the evidence suggests that the transhuman transition will be a different matter. Consider just two points in this respect: the move from human to posthuman will not be an all-or-nothing, us-versusthem affair; and there will be forces other than human and posthuman to complicate the picture.
As I noted in the first section, posthumanity will emerge gradually out of humanity as each of us chooses whether and how to augment ourselves, one function at a time. Instead of a single, world-shaking jump to a new level of being, the transition will consist of a small cognitive upgrade here, a perceptual augmentation there, additional years added to life expectancy and so on. Superhumanity will arrive in small steps.
It seems likely that transhuman enhancements will be widely adopted, with some being almost universal (core cognitive upgrades, for example) and others more limited and specialized (specific perceptual upgrades, environmental toughening). We will see a wide spectrum of posthuman capabilities at varying levels of advancement. Some cultures may even choose to adopt certain enhancements but stand firm against others—just as the Amish allow technologies such as the cell phone that they find compatible with their culture, but don’t allow fixed telephones or televisions. We might think of those who upgrade some abilities while refusing to move beyond a certain level on others as the “humanish.”
Another factor that makes the picture of human-posthuman conflict implausible is artificial superintelligence. The simple scenario of a two-sided conflict splinters when we consider AI as a third force. At least one of the X-Men writers has noticed this, as indicated by these words spoken in Ultimate X-Men #25 by Mr. Seville of the Hellfire Club, in reference to an article handed out by Xavier: “Oh, just some stupid article from the London Times. It’s a piece by Stephen Hawking about mutants being man’s last hope against the evolution of artificial intelligence.”
We cannot yet be sure whether AI will be friendly, hostile or indifferent toward humans and posthumans—or all three, depending on its manifestation. Further, machine intelligence is likely to often take the form not of an independent AI but of participatory superintelligence— IA (intelligence augmentation) rather than AI. This will be participatory both in the sense that we work together with the thinking technology, and in the sense that anyone will be able to tap into it in order to work together, just as we are doing already with the Internet.
If the future isn’t likely to be shaped by a conflict as simple and clear as human versus posthuman, another conflict is more likely. Indeed, it has already begun. This is the ideological and cultural battle we can see developing between pro-posthumans (transhumanists) and anti-posthumans. The Senator Kellys and the William Strykers of the X-Men world seek to stamp out “the mutant menace”—even if that means using dangerous tools such as the Sentinels. Similarly, the anti-posthumans, now known as the bioconservatives, seek to block the transhuman transition—even if that means banning whole lines of technology or prohibiting the pursuit of knowledge.
In “The Red-Green Divide Over Human Enhancement,” journalist Jim Pethokoukis notes that “it is surprising how often talk of the X-Men comes up” when he speaks with enhancement advocates such as transhumanists. He no longer thinks such a metaphor is over the top since he heard “bioethicist George Annas, who favors a ban on enhancement technologies like germline engineering, stat[ing] that such laws are needed precisely to prevent ‘a group of super individuals who view us as defective from subjecting us to their genetic genocide.’”
Annas is far from alone in this. For its September/October 2004 issue, the editors of Foreign Policy posed the following question to eight prominent policy intellectuals: “What ideas, if embraced, would pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity?” One of the eight wise men was Francis Fukuyama, who made his name with the book The End of History before following up with Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Fukuyama’s choice for the world’s most dangerous idea was transhumanism, which he identified as “a strange liberation movement” that wants “nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints.” Fukuyama based his view on the threat to “Factor X” (no joke), a term that appears to stand for some idea of the human essence or soul.
The combatants in this brewing battle for the future of the human species will not be familiar, preexisting groups aligned with the usual political factions. This existential-technological-political conflict is already bringing together strange bedfellows on the bioconservative side: precautionary principle-wielding “left” environmentalists are joining forces with religious conservatives; former Sun Microsystems chief scientist Bill Joy has joined longtime technocritic Jeremy Rifkin in attempting to restrict genetic, nano- and robotic technologies; and self-described “liberal” (anticorporate) humanists are marching in step with reactionaries who care little for humanistic heresies.
We transhumanists are not the utopians critics like to accuse us of being. We fully expect the future to be disturbed by challenges, conflicts and troubles—although perhaps on a higher level than those of today’s monkey politics. Given the probable nature of emerging posthumanity, however, I think we can expect the struggles of ex-men to be at least as engaging as those of the X-Men. With a little luck and some personal effort to reach longevity escape velocity, many of us may be around to contribute to the plot.
MAX MORE, PH.D.
http://www.smartpopbooks.com/essay/full/279
Una bellissima panoramica di ciò che possiamo aspettarci dallo sviluppo della tecnologia relativamente al potenziamento umano.