Thursday 3 May 2012

Transhumanism Doomsday


Well not quite yet. Matthew found this book way back in February when we browsing at Scoobs, a bookstore in Montecasino while waiting to go see the Mousetrap. The Doomsday Handbook fascinated Matthew opening up his world to 50 possible ways the world could end. Interesting this is my 1950th post on this blog which means only 50 more posts till I reach 2000.

I am getting side tracked as usual, back to the Doomsday book. Remembering that I promised Matthew that I would buy the book for him another time, so while in Exclus1ve Books buying another book, I sought out the Doomsday book for Matthew. Another thing that I remembered from that evening in Scoobs was that Matthew and I learnt a new word, and that word is Transhumanism or just H+.

Now either you scrambling to put the word Transhumanism into search parameters or you are waiting for me to tell you. Well read on, my friend...

Transhumanism, trans-human or simply abbreviated as H+ is the term for the use of emerging technologies to transcend from our current human form to the hypothetical posthuman. Is this the Doomsday for humans? To me basically it boils down to two arguments in Transhumanism, you can choose which side you are on. One side we have the Fountain of Youth and on the other, Playing God.

I hope this is a good book for Matthew, who needs to understand the dangers his forefathers, including me, has left in the world for him. As someone once said it is not the world that is in danger but we humans that live on it. "Humans have spent thousands of years building tools to make our lives better, happier and more productive. At some point, our innovation will take us beyond the natural and lead to people with capabilities so advanced that we might not define them as human." Transhumanism! Are we ready?

1 comment:

Louwellen van Rooy said...

I agree with Mathew... My son is getting survival training from me every day. They can only benefit from it. I bought a survival kit from Outdoor Warehouse for some R120. It captivated Donovan’s curiosity and will fuel many hours of great fun for me and him to spend quality time together. What a pleasure to share these things with him.

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