Implications of Transhumanist Future Visions on Present-Day Social and Technological Innovation

Abstract

Transhumanism is a philosophical worldview, which has turned into a cultural movement, which is primarily concerned with the acceleration of human evolution beyond its current limitations through scientific and technological means (Kurzweil, 2005; More, 2013). Transhumanist future visions range from extensive body modifications, such as enhanced cognition, to a world dramatically changed by artificially intelligent machines (Fuller et al., 2014; Kurzweil, 2005). Transhumanists can be considered those who take seriously the subjects and endeavors of radical-life extension, post-humanity, and the development of human and superhuman level artificial intelligence. Rather than see transhumanist future visions are extreme or dangerous, I take these visions seriously by examining their impacts on technological innovation. Transhumanist visions look optimistically towards a distant future and offer counter discourses to contemporary and popular dystopian future narratives. Although transhumanist narratives are often criticized for being overly speculative, these future visions challenge fundamental values and areas of need in of our current societies. The future is a wicked problem, as argued by Tutton (2017), in that there is often confusing and competing information, motives and unknown ramifications about the future. The future can never be known for certain, and yet our society has never been more preoccupied with it. This social preoccupation occurs because there are increasing fears about our loss of control over what the future may hold. According to Wood (2021: 1), “Transhumanism is a vision of the future: a vision of what’s possible, what’s desirable and how it can be brought into reality.” While transhumanist future visions are criticized for being overly speculative, these future visions still have real world impacts in the present. Therefore, it is important to study futurist expectations, like transhumanist visions, because they have real social and material implications, such as the ways in which they shape research and development agendas and priorities as well as research and development funding decisions. I draw on the theoretical framework of the sociology of expectations (SE) literature which emerged within science and technologies studies (STS) from the mid-to-late 1990s. SE examines the future as an object of inquiry, but rather than making predictions of the future SE focuses on the rhetorical and societal effects of future representations. In order to examine transhumanist discourses and their impact on research and decision making, I engaged in a study of the transhumanist movement and its influence through in-depth, qualitative interviews. Methodologically, “the future” can be studied through three different lenses: discourses, decisions, and materiality (Selin, 2008). Therefore, these three lenses aided in informing my research objectives, which are three-fold. I interview transhumanists with the objectives of identifying what future expectations underpin transhumanist discourses and future visions. Then examine how transhumanist discourses impact decisions surrounding social and financial investment within transhumanist visions. Finally, I interviewed engineers, scientists, and innovators in order to understand how/if transhumanist visions have an impact on contemporary technological development. I consider the interviews to be framed within a case study, which is best used when research questions as ‘why’ and ‘how,’ and when studies focus on contemporary phenomenon within its real-world context (Yin, 2018). I analyze my interview data using grounded theory, which relies on inductive reasoning to analyze social processes and relationships. In the empirical chapters, I analyze the strategic use of historical narratives as well as technological progress narratives to identify what expectations underpin transhumanist future visions. Then I analyze how decisions about the future are made by addressing how expectations inform decision-making in the present. I argue that transhumanism is a flexible movement that enables diverse transhumanists to mobilize together, while at the same time it engenders fragmentation. Finally, I analyze how the material configurations of transhumanist visions enact a range of different temporalities. Across these analyses, I unpack the social and financial implications of transhumanism for technological innovation. The main issues at stake in my dissertation are the impacts that speculative visions, like the analyzed transhumanist discourses have on decision making. Future visions and discourses are not neutral but entail social and financial investments in making those visions and discourses come to pass.