This 300 page book about transhumanism claims “to rattle your mind’s cage with some new ideas in this time of ‘accelerating change’. Some of the “new” ideas discussed have been around thousands of years. Others have been around for decades. All have been presented in science fiction and futuristic films.
First, what is transhumanism? It does not mean transsexual. It is a 30 year-old movement that sees itself as being capable of seeing into the future. Who are the transhumanists? The author defines them as those very smart people who can understand the big picture, predict the future and accept the inevitable changes. She says Elon Musk is one (‘although he doesn’t wear the label’) because he wants to set up a colony on Mars. She includes the science fiction writers HG Wells, Arthur C Clark, Julian Huxley and the philosophers Pierre de Chardin, Carl Segan and Adelaide Ferrell and her husband Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock. This title became a 1970s catchphrase for the psychological state of individuals and societies when there is too much change in too short a time.
The intent of FUTURE SUPERHUMAN is to prepare us for the inevitable new world of artificial intelligence, people living to 150, human foetuses grown outside the uterus, meaningful life without employment, designer babies and the end of deformities. Transhumanists’ rational thinking and concern for their fellow humans apparently will improve the human organism and therefore the human condition. We will someday have enhanced intelligence, better bodies and greater psychological capacities. In this new world superhumans will overcome our current human limitations. Sound familiar? It’s Huxley’s 1933 work Brave New World reset to 2022.
Transhumanism seems a very white, western-based movement. For example, she writes that women’s need to find a suitable male partner is the reason “women spend twice as much money as men on maintaining their looks.” Did she ask the women of PNG how long their men devote to their wonderfully elaborate head dresses? Did she speak to a Nubian who has no money to buy a designer dress?
It’s an odd book. It flips from chatty personal stories to discussions of various academics’ predictions of the benefits of AI, to the virtues of sexbots. For example, she tells us her boyfriend left her because she does not want to have children, then she moves on to somatisation.
One of several editorial flaws in the book is that there are no footnotes, nothing to say how she knows women spend twice as much money as men on their appearance. There are chapter notes, indecipherable when trying to find a reference. There is no index, which is a pity since the author does discuss many writers and academics. And then there are minor editing errors. The book contains E=MC2: the equation should be e=mc2 .
Elise Bohan is a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, a cohort of scholars dedicated to understanding and tackling humanity’s most pressing problems. Elsie will be on a panel of experts at the 2022 Sydney Writers’ Festival at the Carriageworks. The topic is ‘Keeping Tech in Check’, Saturday, May 21, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Future Superhuman, Our Transhuman Lives in a Make-or-Break Century
Author Elise Bohan
NewSouth Publishing, a division of UNSW Press, 2022
Paperback ($32), eBook and ePDF