We cannot know the future for sure. As long as our perception of time continues in its current form, the future will continue to be mysterious to us. But this does not prevent us from creating predictions about the future and creating scenarios. Are legends, novels written in the past, and movies trying to design the future not just predictions of the future? We may not know the future, but there is no obstacle to our prediction - other than minds that can be tricky ...
We see that the technologies developed at the end of the 20th century and the 21st century are now designing a brand new future for the world civilization. In the world that starts with 2020, almost everything will be quite different than before. Technologies under the title of Digitalization and Industry 4.0 will change many forms of activities and behavior from business-business areas to the psycho-social world. Even now the pace of change is so high; The more we resist, the faster we lose our existing memorized habits, institutions and concepts.
As we expand the future design to a time horizon such as 2030 or even 2050, the extent of the transformation becomes harder to imagine. But even this temporal distance does not prevent making predictions and generating future scenarios — more generally, a future philosophy. Among these, we can count Ray Kurzweil's "Singularity" approach and Nick Bostrom's "Transhumanism" philosophy.
Singularity
Kurzweil, the singularity guru; It explains an accelerating rise in technologies such as computing, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence. When the singularity is reached; Kurzweil says that machine intelligence will be stronger than integrated human intelligence. He then predicts that the mind will spread out of the Earth, leading the universe to a saturation. According to Kurzweil, singularity is also the point at which machine intelligence and humans will unite.
Transhumanism
Transhumanism, which means "beyond human", is a thesis that has recently come to the fore in scientific circles. “Transhumanism promotes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and exploiting opportunities to improve the human condition and the human organism that opens up with the advancement of technology,” said Nick Bostrom, philosophy professor and transhumanism guru. Attention is also drawn to current technologies such as genetic engineering and information technology, and future prospects such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence ”.
Transhumanism is a futuristic philosophy that addresses the use of current and future advanced technologies to transform the human body and mind. Transhumanism is not a special subject of physical enhancements. The aim of transhumanist philosophy is to transform human conditions and ecosystem, basically, to develop humanity in intellectual, intellectual, psychological and physical dimensions. This goal implies that human beings must survive in a highly differentiated yet almost unpredictable environment in all human and social aspects.
Transhumanism points to an era in which human and intelligent machine will be integrated. Transhumanism is not just a philosophy about cybernetics and robot bodies. Social and political advances must accompany technological and biological developments for the realization of the transhumanist utopia.
What Can the Age of Transhumanism Bring?
Transhumanism; It is a philosophy that aims to take advantage of the possibilities of technology to transform the human body and mind. Transhumanist approach; It aims to fundamentally change human conditions for the physical, mental, intellectual and social development of the human species. In the background of this philosophy are the human desire for self-development and the evolutionary drive to be stronger against other actors in the life environment. In this process, there will be genetic improvement along with advanced technologies, some of which we have begun to witness today. This period, which was initially dated to 2030 and beyond and whose end is not yet known, can be called the "Transhumanist Age".
The transhumanism person outlined above may not be sufficiently defined. For this reason, it would be appropriate to look at the technologies and developments that will affect people in the Age of Transhumanism. In this regard, we can say a few titles as a start. For example, by permanently changing a function (organ) in the human body thanks to medical improvements, the human will become much more productive, productive and creative.
Social perception of aging will change as aging is a curable disease. Humanoids with mental and emotional characteristics will also be included in the definition of human. These are some examples of foresight about what might happen in the later periods of the Transhumanism Age. But the core of the philosophy of transhumanism is, in short, how a technology (or bundle of technologies) can change and transform our definition of human.
Change - Transformation Examples
We can list other exemplary predictions about how the Transhumanist Age can transform human beings. For example, the fact that the bodily prostheses to be used by humans have higher performance than their natural organs is one of them. Therefore, qualifications such as disabled, handicapped or disabled will be a thing of the past. This development is commonly referred to as the "enhanced (enriched) body".
New technological developments that allow people to use their brain and mental potential much more effectively and efficiently will come to the fore. As a result, human cognitive features are expected to improve compared to their natural state. This improvement will likely come thanks to new types of drugs that provide cognitive enhancement, genetic engineering, neural implants, and virtual brains connected in the form of prostheses. Thanks to the addition of prosthetic virtual brains to humans and / or direct wireless connection of the human brain to computer systems, integration with artificial intelligence will occur at higher intensity, and human problem-solving performance will increase to an unprecedented extent.
The Transhumanist Age will be a period in which artificial intelligence and augmented reality are used extensively and widely for human beings. This situation; Thinking, communicating and all kinds of interactions will drastically change our behavior.
The artificial support system, created by the integration of artificial intelligence and augmented reality, will work with implants, such as optical and auditory (possibly including other sensory organ features), to improve human environmental perception. When the Transhumanist Age person looks at the other person, he will be able to access much more information about him beyond his visual profile (physical appearance).
A bigger dream of the transhumanist philosophy compared to the ones summarized above is to offer people the longest and healthiest life thanks to advanced technologies. For this purpose, genetic engineering, biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial organ technology, etc. Areas such as will be used. The essence of this dream is to be able to extend the average human life beyond 100+ years. As mentioned above, transhumanism targets a social perception in which old age is accepted as a curable disease.
What Else Can the Age of Transhumanism Bring?
One of the studies for the relatively distant future — which is gradually approaching — starting with 2030 will be “the science of live ice cream (cryonics), the first examples of which we have begun to hear. The science of live freezing is based on the protection of the human body, especially the human brain, with high precision. Thus, it is aimed to bring the body back to life after death. There are scientists and companies that are actively working on the live ice cream approach, which is a very complex but very lean technology. There are also discussions on religion and morality around the world about this technology. On the other hand, the eternal life that Gilgamesh imagines by trying to find the herb of immortality in the famous epic is sought this time through technology.
Another axis of the Age of Transhumanism will be gene therapy and RNA interference. The goal of gene therapy is to replace bad genes with good ones. RNA interference can selectively map the gene expression (gene map). Thus, these two technologies will give science and technology an unprecedented ability to change our own genetic code. Although it is still in its infancy, serious studies are continuing in these two technology areas. There are discussions about religion and morality on this issue, too.
The human dream of going into space and finding new planets to live in is very old. In this, there are ideas such as the excessive increase of the population in the future, the depletion of world resources, the destruction of the world by a catastrophe like nuclear war, and the continuation of the human species on other planets. Undoubtedly; We have to say that the ongoing global competition for seizing world resources (finding and owning new resources on the near or distant planets) prevails in space. Another dimension of humanity's motive to go to space is the colonization of space, similar to what has happened on earth in past centuries. Regardless of the reason and the target; Some of the advanced technologies of the Age of Transhumanism will be related to opening into space.
When talking about the advanced technologies of 2030 and beyond, we have to underline the issue of cybernetics. Cybernetics; It is the study of human control functions and mechanical and electronic systems designed to replace them, including the application of statistical mechanics to communication engineering. Thanks to cybernetic technologies, human-machine integrations called cyborgs (cybernetic organism, cyborg) will become possible. A cyborg is an entity that is both organic and biomechanical body parts. The term cyborg is not the same as bionic, bio-robot, or android. This term is used for an organism that is able to regain lost function or improve its abilities for whatever reason due to the integration of some artificial component or technology based on some kind of feedback. While cyborgs are generally thought of as a family of mammals, including humans, they can also be any living organism.
Another of the exciting technologies of the Age of Transhumanism are autonomous robots that can reproduce themselves or their own. Using the additive manufacturing technology available today, 3D printers that can produce themselves (their replica) can be considered as a simple example. The autonomy of such a technology shows that it can produce its own decisions and take action based on them.
It is predicted that another of the advanced technologies of the future, dating back to an unknown date, will be molecular manufacturing. Thanks to this technology - called molecular nanotechnology - it will be possible to create completely new products with atomic precision that probably never existed.
Today, we know about artificial intelligence, which has functions and features similar to the human thinking system. While the studies on artificial intelligence continue, another focus will continue to be on the human brain. Backing up the whole or part of the brain, restoring the backup, deleting some information in the brain, uploading completely new information to the brain, etc. thoughts create scientific excitement to be true.
Another issue related to intelligence is the generalized form of artificial intelligence. We can call this "pervasive intelligence". Let's make it easy with an example like this. A robot with artificial intelligence, machine learning and communication skills can share a problem it encounters with other robots with similar abilities to create an 'integrated and common mind', so that autonomous robots can solve the problem together.
Not all of what is described here - and there are some to be added - will not happen at once. Depending on their development, they will take place in a chronological axis. Advanced technologies will lead to the emergence of new technologies and applications by making combinations among themselves. To sum up; The Age of Transhumanism will be very different from what humanity has experienced so far. In terms of transhumanism, the point here may be, rather than what technologies are, how they will change the usual definition of "human".
