conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form: post-humanism and robot justice?!

November 18, 2005

post-humanism and robot justice?!

Well, it’s about time that something about technology and post-humanism showed up on this blog. Jen has a thread that is worth skimming. I would encourage you to do so.

So, my friend, Rich, is writing a book. It would seem that it is one of those very cool William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive kind of books. If you do not know William Gibson, you need to. The man is on to something. But I digress. Rich has a "post-human" subplot in his tale. He has mentioned on his blog that he did not know quite how to write his enhanced character. I mentioned Jen’s thread and that started a very cool e-mail conversation about post-humanism and technology.

Poor Sarah (my main human character). I've really set things up for maximum pain once things go to Hell for her.

Tomorrow I start the parallel narrative of her brother Brian, who's participating in the Singularity and has gone posthuman. I'm kind of intimidated to write from his point of view: after all, he's supposed to be dozens of times more intelligent than I am, and getting moreso all the time.

(That's part of the concept of a technological Singularity: self-perfecting superintelligence. Imagine the headlong pace of advancement we've seen in computer tech over the past thirty years or so, only applied to human health, longevity, intelligence and discernment.)

Follow the extended link to read the unedited conversation. Rich's e-mails are in blue.

Also, there was an online conversation about the very funny book, How to Survive a Robot Uprising, on the Washington Post’s website. I sent in a question and the author responded! Who knew? My question was from Chicago, Ill and about post-humanism. I know. Can I surprise you again?

We begin with Rich’s response to Jen’s thread.

A very cool conversation. I'm disappointed that in the end her (apparent) conclusion seemed to be that since technology use can lead to an interior focus and a separation from physical, location-tied community it's a priori bad, and thus so will posthuman and
Singularity-type developments be.

Still, since it sounds like this is becoming a prevailing theological response to the possibility, it definitely sounds like a good conscientous-objector position for at least one character in the novel to take.

My position is very different: if we allow ourselves physical fixes and crutches (medicine, cars, heavy coats in the cold) and some mental and societal ones (Palmpilots, blogs, television), why aren't more effective ones (neural implants, braintapes mingling their code, communally shared brain-recordings of events) acceptable?

The self changes already as it grows and responds to the events in a life; the fact that technology changes what it means to be human has been true since the first homo sapens sapiens sharpened a stick with a sliver of flint. What degree of this progression is too much?

More to the point, I'm no longer certain it can be put off or avoided. Should it be resisted?

You know, it may not be an issue so much of the technology, but its employment.

Shocking, I know.

If the goal is, say, health. You put in a nano-bot and it keeps yer hear from stopping...this is a good thing most likely.

If the nanobot is to keep your heart operating to make you a better sprinter, then you are talking about nano-roids. Is that already illegal but we just don't know it? What is the benefit?

I think this is the key...that usual quandry. What is the benefit? Can we weigh it somehow against the price? Is there a price for such enhancements?

One thing I recall about the conversation is that we never went the route of legal or illegal. Instead we stayed in the relm of Christian virtue and practice. This is an embodied faith. We are created by God as is. Now, there are choices. A nano-operated prosthesis might be a great thing, even perhaps Godly. But an enhancement for the sake of entertainment? I think that may not be Christian. I really don't care about the legalities of it.

Are we created by God as is?

We can work out until our muscles bulge and we are capable of lifting huge amounts. We can write books that persist our thoughts and memories beyond our own lifetimes. We can build computers that will do our calculations for us in the blink of an eye, without error.

I think we're created by God as potential. We start as a few cells and wind up teachers, soldiers, preachers and convicts. We may lose legs, win marathons, rob banks or paint masterpieces. We're constantly pushing the limits we thought were imposed upon us.

And God created us this way. Testers, pushers, pioneers all. Of course there are prices to pay for any act, but too often the existence of a price is put forward as a reason not to act. The willingness to pay a price is another thing that we are all born with (and can develop) to differing degrees.

I think that augmenting the human brain will lead to better decision making, from at least some portion of the augmented population. Otherwise, what's the point? Better decision making at a societal level will lead to a more prosperous, happier society. Part of the
difficulty faced by my characters is sticking with their individual decisions not to partake as they watch the world evolving and improving around them at paces faster than they'd ever be capable of achieving, and benefiting from the secondary effects of the changes.

How is bettering the (post)human condition incompatible with spiritual goals?

Also, I'm not certain that as posthumanity becomes more the norm, in sporting contests augmentation like a nano-rebuilt set of muscles will be subject to standards-verification like a NASCAR vehicle is, that certain power-to-weight parameters and physical dimensions are met. The perceived virtue in remaining merely human (and endangering
oneself by nearly guaranteeing injury as football players do now) will begin to fade.

At first such modifications will be for the wealthy and the financially well-backed, but after a few years immense transformative computational power will be available to the average joe--I'm sure you've heard it before. The forecast of a computer the size of a deck
of cards with the power of the human brain and an adjusted cost of $100 is expected to reach fruition by around 2025 or 2030. What's possible then, implants or no? What will happen when any adult in Qatar can predict stock market shifts, or some kid in the Czech
Republic can create entire feature films?

Is the moral choice really not to participate, not to partake?

This is all very interesting to me. And, honestly, we may quickly go beyond my
experience with the field. I think you should play around in the literature that Jen posted on he blog.

That being said, I want to toss some Christian jargon around. What I am arguing is that, for Christians, ?post-humanism? may be entirely problematic.

You make some very strong and appropriate points about our createdness. Absolutely, we
are created from the DNA strand up. And, since I am not a fan of Intelligent Design, I must confine my theologizing to some progressive (Darwinian? Selective?) mode of human struggle or growth. I sincerely do not think that God plopped us down on this planet physiologically as is. So, the question then becomes; In what direction are we evolving.

I don’t recall how the post-humanists play with the term homo sapiens. Do you recall? I know that they do. I believe that our evolution is not to be *more* homo sapiens, but homo orans. Hans Urs Von Balthazar (Kindergarten must have been a beotch.) suggests that this is the redeemed state for the human person. Note, I did not say ?individual.? We need to get somewhere between Plato and Aristotle in all this mess. We cannot eliminate our bodies, but neither can we leave them in their current state either. If there is such a thing as spiritual perfection, it makes sense that there is some manner of bodily
perfection.

Homo orans may be just that perfection. We are praying and praising beings. All we are
is to be directed to God. This does not necessarily mean that nano technology must be ruled out. No. But I believe how it is encountered and employed would have to be seriously considered before a Christian could just dive in. How does one?s prayer and praise of God in the flesh improve by adding such technology? It is a good question. Again, I do not say it cannot, but I remain skeptical.

Have we come to a place where our stage of evolution is homo ?technology?? What happens to human communities? The internet can be a great way to build communities. It has proven itself to be so. I am sure nano-technology or whatever else comes down the pike will prove its worth as well. But how? And what will be its dangers? I think we need to play that stuff out so that we are not totally blindsided when the technology becomes popular or even quotidian.

I am definitely going to acquire a copy of Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines and one or two others.

A quick google turns up "techno sapiens," which seems sort of clunky to me, and "homo sapiens sapiens cyber" which comes closer to something I can get behind. This e-mail exchange is the first time I've heard the term homo orans. It took a while to land an English definition, but it I'm guessing that homo orans means "Praying Man" or "Singing Man" or "Worshipping Man" or perhaps "Prayer Man."

Since homo sapiens means "Wise Man," does this imply we'd be giving up our sapience, our propensity to think and question and learn, in favor of simple (profound, perhaps) prayer and worship? Eesh. Creepy. Gives me the willies. Talk about non-human.

It's funny, I haven't thought of the old Resurrection of the Body (RotB) bit in a while... I suppose since the whole of Revelation is widely held my scholars to be a coded "hang in there" message to Christians and/or Jews under the Roman heel, I had pretty much written off the RotB as prey to the same scholarship.

Is the fullest, most perfect expression of humanity a being whose questions are all answered, and who wants and is nothing but a vessel for praise to his diety, or is it the insatiable searcher and learner, ever questing for knowledge and climbing ever higher up the unending stairway of wisdom? Which is "truer," the life of the soul or the life
of the mind?

You say: Is the fullest, most perfect expression of humanity a being whose questions are all answered, and who wants and is nothing but a vessel for praise to his diety, or is it the insatiable searcher and learner, ever questing for knowledge and climbing ever higher up the unending stairway of wisdom? Which is "truer," the life of the soul or the life
of the mind?

Do they have to be separate? Cannot prayer and praise lead to wisdom, learning
and knowledge?

I don't know, if "All we are is to be directed to God" then I don't see how a quest for knowledge benefits that. We might gain wisdom, etc. from a life of total prayer, but would we care, if God is the ultimate, all-consuming object?

And there you go, kids. From there we diverged to a conversation about faith and knowledge. This was more about the anti-intellectualism common in many religious traditions. Thus, learning about anything other than the Bible is useless. Since it was a digression, I'll not post it.

So, what do you think about post-humanism?