We Have Always Been Cyborgs w/ Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
EPISODE #62
Summary
Metahumanist philosopher Stefan Lorenz Sorgner shares his thoughts on the debates surrounding contemporary transhumanism, the possibility of immortality achieved through mind-uploading, and the ethical issues associated with gene editing, digital data collection, and life extension.
Guest Bio
Prof. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner teaches philosophy at John Cabot University in Rome, whereby he particularly promotes the emerging field of posthuman studies. He is also Director and Co-founder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, and Visting Fellow at the Ethics Centre of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, where he was also Visiting Prof. during the summer of 2016. He studied philosophy at King's College/University of London (BA), the University of Durham (MA by thesis; examiners: David E. Cooper, Durham ; David Owen, Southampton), the University of Giessen and the University of Jena (Dr. phil.; examiners: Wolfgang Welsch, Jena; Gianni Vattimo, Turin). In recent years, he taught at the Universities of Jena (Germany), Erfurt (Germany), Klagenfurt (Austria) Ewha Womans University in Seoul (South Korea) and Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). His main fields of research are Nietzsche, the philosophy of music, bioethics and meta-, post- and transhumanism.
Show Notes
Transcript
Luke Robert Mason: You're listening to the FUTURES Podcast with me, Luke Robert Mason.
On this episode, I speak to meta-humanist philosopher, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner.
The future will rather be The Cyborg Age or maybe even a Biological Age because we'll use the digital technologies and get information on biotechnologies in order to use them for increasing the likelihood of us living good lives.
Stefan shared his thoughts on the debates surrounding contemporary transhumanism, the possibility of immortality achieved through mind uploading, and the ethical issues associated with gene editing, digital data collection and life extension.
Stefan, your new book, ‘We Have Always Been Cyborgs' is an in-depth exploration of transhumanism and how it might be realised. So in a nutshell, what is transhumanism?
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner: Transhumanism is an approach which goes back to Julian Huxley. He coined the term in 1951. The basic idea is that we should be using technology in order to break free from the boundaries of our current limitations.
Why should we do so? Well, the basic assumption is that by doing so we increase the chance of living a good life and that's what we all want. That's what all the philosophies in the history of philosophy have been about. They were trying to present an answer to the question of the good life. The answer given by transhumanists in general is that our limitations are the challenge.
We can use a great variety of techniques - traditional ones and corporate ones, as well as the latest ones and external ones. By doing so, we break free from the limitations we currently have and thereby we increase the chances of living good lives.
Mason: I mean, that seems to be one of the most important things that you can take away from how you've approached transhumanism because it is that question of, “What does it mean to live a good life?” as you just said there. Transhumanism gives us the possibility that living a good life is about moving away from human limitations. So how true is that? Is transhumanism key to living a good life or are there other ways, perhaps, in which we can pursue that sort of mission?
Sorgner: Is transhumanism necessary for living a good life? Well, people have been living good lives before there has ever been transhumanism. Transhumanism was only coined in 1951, and clearly, people had been living good lives before that.
But before that, there have been other approaches which actually bear some structural similarities to transhumanism. In particular, the idea of Prometheus, goes back to Ancient Greece. Antiquity bears a lot of similarities to transhumanism and with Prometheus, that idea comes up. We use a very special, divine capacity and rationality, and we use that in our interest in order to realise something which we want to aspire to. Prometheus is also known for having been the one who stands for humans creating other humans; humans giving shape to other humans. That also comes up in the Goethe poem on Prometheus.
Again, yes, we can live good lives without explicitly being transhumanist. We can actually live in accordance with the reflections of transhumanism without ever having heard of the term. However - and this is quite an important step in the contemporary discourse -transhumanism is the only approach that explicitly addresses the revised understanding of who we are as human beings. We humans as fully part of the evolutionary process and the empirically accessible world. It's a move away from the traditional self-understanding that our human nature is something which is immaterial and which is unchanging. It lies in our rationality. It lies in our free will. It lies in our being created in the image of God. It lies in our immaterial autonomy. Transhumanists move away from these long-standing self-understandings of us - of human beings - which have been dominant in the Western world for 2,500 years.
In addition, they also realise and add the demand based on empirical evidence. If we've managed to increase our capacities - and we've usually done so by means of technologies - the likelihood of us living good lives also increases.
This has happened in the past 200 years. In the past 200 years, we've already managed to double our life expectancy. On average we manage to live 80 years instead of 40 years. That usually has quite a significant effect on the likelihood of us good living good lives.
Mason: Transhumanism is problematic because it's often considered a contested term. Francis Fukuyama famously described transhumanism as “the world's most dangerous idea”. How true is that Stefan? If it is true, should it be considered a badge of honour for transhumanists, or should it be approached as an ethical dilemma that transhumanists have to deal with?
Sorgner: Yeah, I actually agree with this. Yes, it was what you just said. It is a badge of honour. It is a dangerous idea if you yourself stand for such an essentialist, dualistic and anthropocentric conception of who we are as human beings. If you regard us, humans, to have that specific divine spark which is immaterial, which was given to us by God, and which was connected to our bodily existence since the time of fertilisation onwards...if you stick to such an understanding, then yes, it's clear that transhumanism must be an extremely dangerous idea because it's moving exactly from that concept with all of its problematic and paternalistic implications.
Here, transhumanism is actually a possibility to realise the multiplicity and plurality of human flourishing. It takes into consideration that all humans and all other animals have very specific, idiosyncratic, and individual needs, drives, and desires. We can realise them in particular if we use the help of the latest technologies. By promoting the possibility of enabling us to free ourselves from these paternalistic structures - which in our culture are still extremely dominating - the individual's likelihood of living happily and joyfully can be increased even further.
I think that's a wonderful achievement, but we're fighting against encrusted structures which have been dominant for an extremely long period of time. That's why many people have a great amount of hesitation concerning transhumanism. Francis Fukuyama is a prime example of that kind of bio-conservative approach.
Mason: Where do you think some of those misunderstandings come from? For a start, what are some of those misunderstandings surrounding transhumanism and where do you think they originate from?
Sorgner: In many circumstances, it might not always be just a misunderstanding. It might simply be a clash of different anthropologies; a different understanding of what you regard worthy of survival.
There are very different hesitations which people have concerning transhumanism. On the one hand, the socialist theory is that by using technologies and by inventing further technologies, this leads to an undermining of the equality we have on Earth. Even further, it leads to an increasingly hierarchical society. That can be a significant worry, actually. That's an issue which many transhumanists deal with and approach. I don't think it's a significant worry at all. It's definitely an issue which we can deal with, but it's a legitimate worry, and it's something which many transhumanists deal with explicitly.
Then there's the green theory which says there is some nature and our natural existence which is devoid of culture. We need to return to this properly natural existence, which lies before all cultures sometimes in an epoch a long time ago in the past. This Is an absolutely silly approach actually because there are so many natural things, you know. We naturally get cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, you know. All the natural disasters which have taken place from volcano eruptions to asteroids which hit the earth - have caused mass extinctions in the past. There were already five max mass extinctions before human beings had even entered the world. As part of these mass extinctions, up to 95% of all species were killed. This was natural. So that idea of nature being good and culture being bad is absolutely absurd.
Then furthermore, there's the bio-conservative, religious theory that we are created in the image of God. We are doing something which only God should do. If you stick to that understanding, then ‘the transhuman’ is a dangerous idea. However, at the same time, one must always also keep in mind the implications of such an approach. Very often, the implications are that there's an objective meaning of the good, which goes along with these monotheistic, religious traditions. There is a clear message that only if you stick to these demands, are you good. If you don't, you're bad. That is usually implied. You need to live as a man and woman in a heterosexual relationship and have kids, otherwise, you're ill. You don't fulfil the natural requirements of what it means to be human.
We can see it. It has some really dangerous, paternalistic, and even potentially totalitarian implications if you take such a stance. Transhumanism is the attempt to free ourselves from these encrusted structures.
That's why I think it's an incredibly important and relevant approach for increasing the likelihood of us living good lives and realising that in a non-totalitarian manner; in a non-paternalistic manner. Basically in individual tribes, the needs of every single person get taken into consideration. I think that's just an amazingly wonderful achievement, which we ought to promote much further.
Mason: Well, you said the keyword there: natural. The joke in the book is that it is almost natural for human beings - homo sapiens - to extend themselves and to always be transitory. You say, in fact, we are constantly changing hybrid cyborgs. More simply, our turning into cyborgs is a development which has taken place since we became homo sapiens. So what do you mean by that, Stefan?
Sorgner: Exactly. This is a redefinition of what the term _natural_ has stood for, for a long period of time. Instead of taking human nature as being a higher Catholic nature which represents an eternal idea of the good, I take seriously that there is no outside of nature. We are all psychophysiological entities who are permanently in the process of change. By nature. we are hybrids. We have more non-human cells which make up part of our body than we have human cells.
What has recently happened, actually, as a consequence was that Martine Rothblatt's company realised the genetically modified pigs heart, which was successfully transplanted into a human. Rothblatt is one of the leading transhumanists. What was realised here was that we genetically modified a pig's heart, which was successfully transplanted into a human, and he's been alive now and flourishing for more than two weeks, so far. That's a wonderful achievement.
Human-animal hybrids are not something to be disgusted by or that we ought to find yuck. Realising that we've always been hybrids is just a development which could be rephrased and defined as natural - as long as it's something which promotes our tribes, our interests and our wants. Living longer, healthily, is something which most people identify with living better lives.
I think there's just a huge, huge plurality of what people want in life. But there's one thing which _most_ people - I'm not saying all people identify with living better lives and increasing the quality of lives - but that's increasing the health span and living longer, healthily. Because most people identify this with an increased quality of life, that should be taken seriously. That's what transhumanists are doing. We can realise that goal, and we've already managed to realize that goal in many different ways, by developing new technologies. That's a wonderful achievement.
Mason: Well, the point there is very nuanced because what you're saying is, “living longer, healthily”. You're not saying, “immortality”. Why is it so important to separate those two and make it clear that a transhumanist goal isn't necessarily an immortalist goal?
Sorgner: Exactly. So many media representatives identify transhumanists as this weird bunch of young people who've been sitting in front of the computer too long, and who are dreaming of their minds getting uploaded to a hard drive. Then they realise immortality and live in a computer simulation, all by having their minds reintegrated into another organism. That's just a caricature of what transhumanism is. There's always a grain of salt attached to it.
There are some transhumanists who might take it more seriously than others. When serious transhumanists use the term 'immortality', then it's meant in a metaphorical sense. It stands for the relevance of increasing the lifespan. Not just the lifespan, but the lifespan during which we are healthy. Just increasing the lifespan, again, is not something which most people would favour. If you're extremely sick and suffer all the time and then you could live another hundred years, that wouldn't necessarily be in most people's interests. It might be in some people's interests nevertheless, but most people would be extremely hesitant in that respect.
It also needs to be kept in mind that immortality is not even a realistic option. Most transhumanists affirm some kind of naturalist world order, which means there was a Big Bang at the beginning - there was an expansion of the universe. Eventually, it might sort of slow down the development. It might come to standstill or the whole process of expansion will be reversed and the cosmological singularity will come about. If there's a cosmological singularity with all the matter being united in one point of infinite density, how should any uploaded mind survive that?
So immortality in a naturalist framework cannot even be meaningfully conceptualised. However, what we have realised is that we've doubled life expectancy in some of the richest countries. We even manage to have an average life expectancy of 90 years. Transhumanism also considers that even 122 years - which so far seems to have been the longest lifespan of any human on earth - doesn't have to be the maximum, because there are Greenland whales who have lived more than 200 years. There are other animals that've lived more than 500 years.
By using the possibility of data analysis as well as genome editing, we have the possibility of integrating the genes responsible for longevity into humans and of radically breaking free of the boundaries of our human limitations with respect to that specific capacity.
The interesting thing was actually just recently. There is the axolotl which is an animal. If it gets harmed, loses a limb or damages the brain, then it will regrow without any deficits. Recently - actually this year - some scientists have managed to take the genes responsible for that wonderful capacity from the axolotl and transfer these capacities to other animals. As a consequence, they then also had the possibility of regrowing some of their organs and the brain without any malfunctioning afterwards, or without any deficits afterwards. If that works, if we can transfer the capacities from the axolotl to other animals, then in principle there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to do so also - taking the genes responsible and integrating them in the human genome - which would be absolutely wonderful.
Mason: Well, all of these possibilities sound so wonderfully exciting. Would you say, Stefan, that they almost point towards a world in which humanity lives in some form of utopia? Or is utopia a problematic word when it comes to transhumanism?
Sorgner: I'm extremely hesitant when people invite me to give talks about utopia. I was invited to Vrotslav. It was a big event dedicated to the future of Europe and the topic was utopia and the future of Europe. They were expecting me to present a transhumanist utopia. I think utopia is one of the worst things we should hold up and aspire for. Coming from Germany, there have been some historical utopias affirmed and trying to be realised. We've seen the devastating and terrible consequences which have gone along with the Third Reich.
This isn't only a case of the Third Reich. Whenever people try to realise any kind of ideal form of life or any kind of ideal political system, then people wanted to realise sometime in the future and people nowadays had to suffer and dedicate themselves to creating that perfect future system. The only consequence it had was that it caused extreme problems for the people living nowadays. It caused a lot of suffering. It caused a lot of rejecting their own wishes and desires. Just for realising a goal in the future which can never get realised.
We should really just get rid of any kind of utopias. The best way is to look at the technologies and possibilities - cultural possibilities as well - which we have at the moment in order to see what are realistic goals. What can be pragmatically done at the moment in order to increase the possibility that more and more people live better lives? By doing so, we manage to increase the likelihood of people living better lives much more efficiently and more realistically.
Most importantly, we don't force currently living people to sacrifice themselves for a future that we will never be able to realise. That's why I think we should please abandon all the utopias. All I'm presenting is certain vision guidelines and pragmatic suggestions on the basis of what currently seems realistic, but that's very different from this perfect utopian state for which we should sacrifice everything else.
Mason: I think that's an extremely important point. That the present can often be sacrificed for a future that will never be actualised. You go as far as saying that transhumanism - instead of being associated with utopias - should be associated with something called, ‘nihilistic positive pessimism.’ So again, what do you mean by that? Isn't transhumanism often associated with escapism, utopianism and positivism rather than pessimism? How do those two function together?
Sorgner: Well, many thanks for actually highlighting that specific phrase. It takes some time to explain all the specific details of what you've just summarised. You normally wouldn't think that transhumanism is pessimistic. How can it make sense to identify transhumanism with a type of pessimism? I take pessimism here from a philosophical stance. Going back to Nietzsche, to Schopenhauer and the Buddhist tradition. Here again, we see certain correlations, similarities and analogies, which go on with many currently living transhumanists.
Quite a far are actually Buddhist or have sympathies towards a Buddhist approach. That pessimism which I'm referring to is also at the basis of Buddhist pessimism. That type of philosophical Buddhist pessimism basically stands for the analysis that life is suffering. All the permanent processes of overcoming that we need to experience are correlated with some kind of suffering. If I want something or if I desire something that I don't have then I need to put some effort into it, and that causes me to suffer. That's the basic transhumanist condition of what it means to live in this world and be part of the world.
It is a permanent state of suffering. The best we can hope for is momentary types of pleasures. Sometimes we realise the goal which we've been working hard for, for ages. Then the fun we get lasts for maybe five minutes. In many circumstances, it only lasts one minute or even less. Afterwards, we strive for another goal. That's the basic condition in which we are all called and that's what pessimism stands for.
On the other hand, yeah, it is a positivity which I affirm. I think we've got a very good reason for being positive. Positive here means what we've achieved so far. I've referred to the realisation which we've done concerning increasing the lifespan, but we can also refer to other capacities. Our World in Data is a wonderful platform hosted by the University of Oxford, which basically shows how many of our challenges have been altered in the past, towards the state we are in now.
One of the examples which I want to highlight is that of absolute poverty. So just 200 years ago, we had an absolute poverty rate of more than 90% all over the world. Just in the UK, there was an absolute poverty rate of more than 80%. In the meantime, globally, that absolute poverty rate went down to 10% in the past 200 years. I think that's a wonderful achievement. Of course, 10% is still too much. Using and developing these new technologies has already made the probability get reduced from 90% to 10%. That's why we can be positive about the correlations which the new technologies bring about.
With the new technologies, I always include hygiene and education. These are all technologies. I think we've got good reasons for being positive about the correlations which new technologies spring along with them. Another important insight is since the beginning of this millennium, for the first time in the world we have had more democracies than authoritarian regimes. Again, we might not all agree in some of the instances that some of the countries which claim to be democratic are democratic in our sense. But the important thing is that they're affirming democracy. They're aspiring for that. That challenge is concerning the proper realisation of democracy also in countries like Germany. They have challenges related to democracy and it's easy to criticise.
The important thing is to uphold it as a goal, as something to improve and to work on permanently. That's the best we can do all the time. Again, that's another reason to be positive concerning the developments which are currently going on.
Mason: It's interesting there that you mentioned the word 'suffering', because when you hear the word 'transhumanism', you rarely think about suffering. Surely that's about overcoming and extending the human being; enhancing the human being and not having a human being that would have to suffer. I mean, in David Pearce's understanding, transhumanism where there's a hedonistic imperative essentially would never suffer ever again, but it sounds like the suffering is key to us being a transitory species. There must always be something that we have to overcome for us to live in a transhuman state, because if we did overcome all of these limitations, then we would become post-human, wouldn't we?
Sorgner: What David Pearce and I have in common - and we share quite a lot in that respect - is that we both see suffering as a challenge. His project is about sort of abolishing suffering, and he thinks that can be realised by means of transhumanist endeavours. I just don't think that's really a plausible option. That's again my hesitation concerning any type of utopian stance. I feel now that we need to acknowledge that there is suffering. That's still part of us, and will still remain a part of us, even the more we use, deploy and develop new technologies.
We can already see that we've reduced a lot of suffering. Again, just look 200 years back. It was normal for six-year-olds to work in a coal mine or for seven-year-olds to work in a clothing factory in England. Then, no one was considering having 30 vacation days for workers, which is now widely taken for granted among the developed countries with the exception of the United States.
Here we can see that most of us today probably live better lives than the Kings 500 years ago. In that way, we've managed to reduce a lot of suffering just by having hair dryers, central heating, and being able to have a fridge which means we can keep our food fresh so that we don't get any health problems. We reduce the likelihood of getting ill, and that is reducing suffering and increasing us being healthy and living longer.
But abolishing suffering? I think that's a utopia, and I don't think it can be meaningfully conceptualised in any way. David Pearce and I, both agree and acknowledge - as many transhumanists do - the relevance of suffering, which also has implications concerning how we treat other non-human animals. We need to take them into consideration much further than what used to be the case in our cultural past.
Mason: Well, what I'm trying to understand, Stefan, is whether suffering is a motivating factor for why someone might become a transhumanist. If they see that they are suffering, is that the reason why they might become a transhumanist? Or if we're no longer thinking about suffering, as you've said there - we've got to a state where we are so privileged, especially in Western democracies and that a lot of our needs are seen to and cared for - is that the point at which we start thinking with a transhumanist mindset and we think about what else we could do?
That's where morphological freedom comes into the fold, and we start thinking about what aesthetic changes we can make to our bodies. Things that don't allow us to escape suffering because we're no longer suffering, but because we're in that state we can now pick and choose from the smorgasbord of differentiated ways of being as human beings.
Sorgner: I mean, suffering is not only a challenge related to pure survival. One of the fundamental sources of suffering is just having some food to eat and a nice place to stay. That's the fundamental source of suffering, but there can be other sources of suffering which are related to boredom or just having enough. But even for the ones who are so privileged and might get bored sometimes, it also applies to them that they get ill. They get cancer and that causes a lot of suffering, or Alzheimer's, or Parkinson's. They get old and they no longer have the capacities that they used to have when they were young.
I don't think it's just a reason to become a transhumanist. Suffering is the basic motivation for why anyone deals with philosophical issues or religious issues. That's why there is the Theodicy question of why there is so much suffering in the world. What makes you turn to God and hope? If there's only suffering in the world, at least there will be an afterlife in which I can live blissfully ever after. I only need to go through suffering for a couple of decades during that short lifespan on earth anyway.
Suffering is the basic challenge which makes us turn to any kind of explanation of how to deal with the world, or how to relate to the world. What transhumanism provides - at least in contrast to monotheistic religions - is a way to pragmatically deal with and find solutions for the issue of suffering. Traditional approaches instead provide us with reasons why we should not use technologies which are already available, so they hinder us from finding proper solutions to suffering in this world.
Right now, for example, it's already possible to choose fertilised eggs after in vitro fertilisation and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. But in many countries in the world, it's just illegal to do so. We have the possibility of choosing fertilised eggs on the basis of which egg is least prone to really bad diseases. Therefore, we could reduce the suffering of the next generation, however that selection procedure - for reasons related to some ideological religious reflections and ideas - is illegitimate and legally forbidden.
That is what I find so problematic. Showing that in many circumstances we are being stopped from doing an act where no harm is being done to any other person, but it's still forbidden for some really abstruse reasons of us possessing the immaterial divine spark. That's what I'm trying to show. We should allow human flourishing to live and to continue to express itself. Of course, we mustn't harm any other persons, but that is the case.
For example, when we talk about marriage, 50 years ago homosexuality was seen as a criminal offence. Nowadays, marriage for all is widely taken for granted. But marriage for all still stands for two people being connected. In Colombia, for example, three men said, “We are in love with each other. We want to get married”. In Colombia, they were granted the right to get married. That is in the interest of the political system. If one of the three persons gets ill, then it's the other two who need to finance them. They relieve the burden on the government to take care of the individual. It's even in the interest of politics. That's the financial interest related to why a political system supports and should support the institution of marriage. It's in the financial interest of the political system. They want to be together and they have specific rights associated with this contract of marriage. Again, this is something which we should grant in Western countries in Europe as well.
Now, we've even got the possibility of having children with three biological parents. In the UK that's a legitimate option, but only in the case that the potential mother-to-be has a severe disease. Why shouldn't it be the option for two women, a lesbian couple who want to have biologically related offspring? It's a technology which is already available and that we prevent them from using. If two women and a man say, “We are in love and we want to use the technology to have biologically related offspring. We'll take care of the child”. Then it would be a quasi-traditional family. Why should the government prevent them from even getting married? They even have a biologically related child, so it is in the interest of everyone involved and no harm is being done. But we - for ideological reasons which are no longer justifiable or plausible given our cultural framing - still forbid these procedures. These are problematic paternalistic structures which I think really need to be overcome.
Mason: It's interesting to hear you talk about whether a transhumanist technology can do harm because it sounds like you're almost hinting at a future whereby not doing certain forms of technological intervention could be the thing that does harm. Do you think will end ever end up with that flip inverse in that sort of future?
Sorgner: In some respects that is already the case. With respect to the examples we just mentioned, we have the option of doing something and we don't do it. We don't allow that to occur. As a consequence, more harm occurs in this life world.
Then it leads to a further question and that is really interesting, actually, in how far should some of these procedures get morally obligatory? Maybe legally obligatory. These are the tricky issues. We have a situation where by means of genetic intervention, by means of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, it would be possible to - in a reliable fashion, without any significant side effects - increase the average life expectancy of a child by 30 years. If parents then decided not to do so, is that bad parenting? Is that negligence? Should parents then maybe have a moral or even legal obligation to use the procedure? In the end, that's the sort of issue we are encountering with the vaccination debate right now.
These are difficult, difficult questions. I'm not giving general answers to them because, in any of these situations, we need to take the specific cultural situation into consideration. I'm trying to show now that we have certain moral guidelines. One of the moral guidelines is that negative freedom. The absence of constraint and the right of morphological freedom. The right to make decisions for yourself, as long as you don't harm any other person. It's just an enormously important right, and this needs to be upheld and needs to be even promoted further.
As long as this is being taken into consideration, then we can make further inferences as to what are the implications concerning that specific decision. For example, should it be legally obligatory for a parent to genetically vaccinate the child in order to increase the chance of the child living healthily for another 30 years? These are the issues which we will probably have to have to address in the not-too-far future.
Mason: Now a lot of people come to transhumanism through the sorts of technologies that are associated with transhumanism. You do a wonderful job at categorising some of those technologies, categorising them as either silicon-based transhumanist technologies or carbon-based transhumanist technologies.
So, what is the difference between the two? How do genetic cyborgs or digital technologies all inform the transhumanist debate?
Sorgner: Exactly. That's a very important distinction, which often does not get a sufficient amount of recognition in the debates. Often transhumanism is simply identified with technological singularity and mind uploading. We will put the mind on a hard drive within the next 20 to 30 years. That's what Elon Musk and his friends are proposing, and what they even defend in very high-ranking political circles. That would be an example of silicon-based transhumanism because we live in a silicon age. Silicon is the basis for computing. Their idea of silicon-based transhumanism is that the future development of humans lies in us getting further connected to PCs, and our personalities then getting put on hard drives where the development will continue to take place after the event of singularity, where maybe even our individual personalities will develop further as digital entities.
Some suggest now that developments of highly structured algorithms becoming more capable than humans will not be the result of humans getting connected with computers, but it will actually take place as a consequence of digital evolution itself. This represents a certain Silicon Valley type of transhumanism, as many people affirm it there. There are many good reasons why that is extremely implausible as I've shown in the book, 'We've Always Been Cyborgs'.
I think we've got many more reasons to focus on carbon-based transhumanism. Carbon-based as our organic bodies have a carbon basis. That means here with the technology of genome editing - in particular CRISPR-Cas9 but also with respect to the possibilities of brain-computer interfaces, of our bodies getting analysed and by means of big gene data - we get enormously important insights for altering our bodily capacities. We then break our boundaries with respect to living further, as embodied beings; as embodied posthumans, and not as personalities who live in cyberspace or who live on a hard drive. I'm not excluding the other possibilities but that is so far away in the future if it can at all be realised.
Interestingly, it's been discussed in Netflix series like Black Mirror and in movies like Transcendence. It catches the emotions of many people. Students and researchers find it extremely fascinating, but from a pragmatic perspective, it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. The intellectuals in Oxford who propose these ideas get dealt with and referred to by world-leading entrepreneurs.
From my perspective, all they talk about is like a question about the size of angels. It's similar to the questions in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, people talked about how many angels fit on a needle's pin. On the basis of the Christian medieval understanding, that question makes sense. If there are angels, you need to ask the question: How big are they, and how many fit on the tip of a needle's pin? From the background of the cultural situation in medieval times, it made full sense and it grasped the attention of many scholars and theologian philosophers at the time.
In the same way, nowadays, we talk about mind uploading, singularity, or us living in a computer simulation. From the background of the shared technological framework which many people share, that makes sense. But if you look at it from a more realistic philosophical perspective, then this is not going to happen in the next 30, 40, 50 years. This will not have any relevance for you. We need to focus on what is directly relevant to us. I'm not excluding the possibility that it will happen, but this is not the question which actually will have any significant impact on your life.
I'm not downplaying the possibility of digitalisation. Digitalisation has an enormously important impact on our life, but it's not going to be about mind uploading. It's the issues of privacy, collecting data and what we do with our data which really are really important and that we need to take seriously.
Mason: Well, one of those directly relevant figures or technologies is the idea of the cyborg. You give the cyborg a certain importance, a certain conceptual importance. As we're beginning to see ever-smaller computers integrate and enter the body, that does something to how we think about who and what we are. It doesn't just allow us to do certain things out in society and in the world, but it dissolves philosophical boundaries between the human and technology. Why is this idea of the cyborg so conceptually important in your work?
Sorgner: The cyborg as an entity consists of two different parts. The cyber part comes from the Kubernetes. Kubernetes is an Ancient Greek term which stands for the helmsman; the steersperson of a ship. Or, it is an abbreviation for 'organism'. We have carbonate organic parts and we've got mechanical, silicon-based cyber parts.
However, it doesn't only have to be mechanical or silicon-based. Kubernetes - cyber - stands for any type of steering. Steering is something which shapes us. We are being steered. We are being altered as organisms. We get born and then our parents steer us. Our parents alter us. We get born without having the capacity for language, and then our parents upgrade us with language.
Language is a fascinating feature. Language is sort of the basic requirement for rationality. The traditional explanation for how we gained rationality was a different one. That was a dominant one in the Western tradition. It goes back to Plato, to Cicero, to Pico della Mirandola, to Kant. They all affirmed that our rationality is something immaterial. We gained it as a consequence of some divine spark getting attached to our bodies. Something immaterial and something material getting united. The explanation for how we gained language - how we gained rationality - was related to the substance. Something unchanging, something nonmaterial. That stands for the dominant anthropology, for the dominant human nature which was generally accepted in our culture for 2000 years and more.
Us being represented by the cyborg is a breakaway from that cultural tradition. By realising that no, we didn't get language as a consequence of God placing it there, attaching it to our body, animation taking place at the time of fertilisation. As Pius IX said in the second half of the 19th century, he clearly stated the official Catholic doctrine - which is still valid - which basically said animation - and that means the rational soul getting connected to the human body - occurs at fertilisation. That's why abortion is illegal and so on.
By us being seen as cyborgs, gaining rationality and language as a consequence of external factors as part of education and as a consequence of environmental changes, that is a paradigm shift concerning how we conceptualise us as human beings.
In addition, it also reveals that we are entirely part of the world. We are not standing out by having, as the sole entity, something which is immaterial, but we are entirely part of that essentially accessible world. We entirely empirically accessible, just like all the other animals and plants and so on. We are not categorically different, but merely gradually different from other animals. As a consequence, it doesn't justify that anthropocentric stance which highlights that only humans possess dignity, whereas other animals do not. That's an important anthropocentric shift that many people nowadays also find extremely plausible. But on a legal level this shift has not been acknowledged appropriately because basically in all the countries in the world, animals are not classified as persons. There is one exception which recently happened in Argentina with respect to Sandra, the orangutan who was actually recognised as a person and as a consequence had to be freed from the zoo there. This is what the implications are.
It really is a fundamental paradigm shift and on a legal level, we still live in that Judeo-Christian, Kantian tradition which highlights that we, as humans, are superior to the rest of the world. Canan tradition, highlights that we, as humans are superior to all the rest of the world, which is highly dangerous, highly problematic and implausible.
Mason: Well, listening to you speak there, it sounds like education itself is one of the oldest forms of human enhancement technology. If we consider education as an enhancement technology, how does that change the way we think about different technological interventions that could lead to human enhancement?
Sorgner: Yeah. Wonderful question, actually, because education is sort of paradigmatically the process which clearly is identified with enhancing human capacities. It's even an obligation for parents to enhance their children. It's an obligation for parents to send their kids to school, to provide them with knowledge of mathematics and their mother tongue, and to learn about history. If they don't send their kids to school, then that's the negligence of the child. A state can remove the children from the family. If you realise that the goal of the emerging technologies is just the same as with respect to traditional forms of education, that will lead to reclassifications of how we see things like genetic modifications. If we, by means of genetic modifications, manage to realise an increase of the mathematical IQ by 10 or 20 points.
This is also the goal of why you send your kids to school. So why should it somehow be bad if you use a technological intervention if for the same reason you try to achieve that goal by sending your kids to school? It's even a moral and legal obligation to do so.
So the question is just one of reliability and the side effects, and that's what we obviously need to work on by making these new technologies reliable. First realising that gene technologies - brain-computer interfaces - are in tune with what humans have always been doing, leads us to a re-evaluation of these technologies. It also makes us accept them more.
Even us becoming human is part of an educational structure. Us learning a language is part of education. In that way, the new technologies are not something radically new in the sense that they represent something which is categorically different from what we've always been doing, but it's in tune with what we've always been doing - as long as we promote the goals which we regard as appropriate. In that sense, yes, we should use genetic modifications on our children if the same, appropriate goals can be realised.
But it's the same as with traditional forms of education. Not all types of education are morally legitimate. Some cases of education should rather be classified as child abuse. The same can be the case with respect to genetic modifications, but at least it also shows that if the goal is appropriate, then a genetic modification should rather be seen as a moral duty, or maybe even as a legal duty. It's definitely something which can also be strongly affirmed and should be affirmed as the same goals can be realised with respect to traditional forms of education.
Mason: Well, if mind uploading is the exemplar of silicon-based transhumanism, then it certainly feels like gene editing is the exemplar of carbon-based transhumanism. You say explicitly that genome editing might actually be the most important scientific invention of the beginning of the 21st century. So what are some of the implications of gene editing? What has biotechnology like this already made possible, and how might it go forward to enhance our entire evolution?
Sorgner: So gene technologies in general are extremely promising. CRISPR-Cas9 which I briefly mentioned is just one branch of gene technologies. There are other types of gene technologies including the one I mentioned earlier and that are related to choosing eggs and having in vitro fertilisation. That has become a standard application and a standard technology. We can take some of the cells, and then the eggs need to be fertilised. As a consequence, we can remove one or two cells and use them for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. It enables us to see the qualities; the likely capacities; the likely diseases; the likelihood of how the entity as a later human will respond to certain drugs; what capacities of memory they will have. These are all insights we can already have on the basis of gene analysis. That is one example of a gene technology which already works extremely well. In some parts of the world, it's already legitimate to apply these technologies to a certain degree. With respect to influencing procreation and even improving procreation, improving the capacities, improving the likelihood of your child living a better life, having a better life can be realised and has already been realised by means of that technology.
Then the next step would be the one with genome editing - CRISPR-Cas9 - where it's not about selecting specific fertilised eggs and then implanting the most promising ones with respect to their good life, but actually changing the genes. We recently had a famous example which took place in China where some physician was doing that on some offspring of couples where one of the partners was HIV positive. He realised a gene modification which is basically a genetic vaccination because the goal was to make the children immune to HIV.
Mason: Yeah.
Sorgner: There was a major outcry because of the riskiness and because it was not necessary to implement such risky technologies. In principle, someone who is HIV positive with the latest drugs could still live a decent, normal life, so it was not necessary to implement these technologies. It was done on the basis that the parents actually gave consent to that intervention. The physician was not a random physician. He was not a random scientist. He was a highly trained scientist based in the best US American institution in that field. It's about taking certain risks, and that's what's been done in the past. We've had enormously important achievements.
I mean, sometimes the interventions which have occurred have been extremely problematic. In the case, for example, of the physician in the UK, in the 19th century, who had some insights concerning how to get rid of smallpox through a smallpox vaccination. He got the idea, realised the concept and then applied the concept, which he developed to a farmer's boy after he had infected the farmer's boy with smallpox. Obviously, that is morally highly dubious and problematic. As a consequence however of that intervention, we actually managed to get rid of smallpox, because it worked. Now we've eradicated smallpox as a consequence of vaccination all over the world. The beginning might have been - or was - extremely dubious, but in the end, the consequence it had for millions and millions of human beings was that we no longer have smallpox. We can get vaccinated against it and it no longer exists, which is wonderful.
If this gene vaccination which was undertaken in China for creating immunity to HIV has worked, which it seems to have done, and it can be reproduced in a reliable manner, I think that would be absolutely wonderful. We could actually manage to get rid of HIV, which would be an enormously important achievement. We can already see the advantages.
Genome editing is widely applied with respect to plants and other animals and it's functioning without any side effects. So here we see masses of applications. The further step, which I think is extremely interesting, is the possibility of animal hybrids can be realised. Here, is the example concerning the genetically modified heart has been realised by Martine Rothblatt's company, as a consequence of which we've managed to transplant a genetically modified pig’s heart into a human. That has the potential to save the life of hundreds of thousands of people who are in need of organ transplants.
These are just a couple of examples because you could mention even more from bioprinting and other possibilities from changing adult stem cells into embryonic stem cells and playing around. The possibilities and the achievements are myriad. If we apply big data analysis to our genes, to find out more concerning correlations between our genes and diseases, the likelihood of human flourishing, of feeling good, and the interrelations between how we react and which epigenetic effect this has on our genes...if we get more insight on that, that's a prerequisite for actually influencing our genes in a more direct manner by means of genome editing. This is going to be the most important development in the forthcoming decade.
The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st might have been a sort of Silicon Age. The future will rather be sort of the Cyborg Age, or maybe even a Biological Age. We'll use digital technologies and get information on biotechnologies in order to use them for increasing the likelihood of us living good lives. That is, I think, extremely wonderful. There are so many companies actually working on that right now - in particular with respect to the expansion of the health span. I'm extremely positive and hopeful with respect to these developments continuing in the future.
Well, it certainly feels like there is a myriad of possibilities, but when we often talk about transhumanist interventions or transhumanist technologies, they can sometimes feel very science fictional. They're nascent possibilities that may or may not come to pass. The way some transhumanists talk about mind uploading is as if it's going to be inevitable. The reality is that there's no guarantee that some of these things will actually come to pass, but why should we take something like mind uploading philosophically seriously? I mean, is there anything to it? What do we learn when we engage in these philosophical debates about nascent or possible future technologies? Or, are we going down this rabbit hole and wasting a lot of time that could be spent on other philosophical arguments, debates and ideas?
Well, it's a matter of what we should prioritise. If you ask me about prioritisation, then I would rather focus on things like cyborg intervention, brain-computer interfaces, and gene technologies. We should focus on them much more. We should focus much more on issues like increasing the human health span because that's what most people want. A lot of companies and so. On the other hand, it seems to resonate quite strongly with many people; that rather escapist dream of us getting uploaded on a computer.
Mason: But I'm also asking, Stefan, if we take the idea that we can upload a human mind or transfer it to silicon - if we take that seriously and we have those philosophical discussions and we have those debates out in the world - do we learn something about what it means to be human today in the present from doing that sort of speculative philosophising, or are we making these technologies feel like they're more real than they actually are?
Sorgner: I think it's both. Both are the case. We definitely make them more realistic and realisable than they actually are, as I've just tried to say before. But of course, there's some philosophical value there in engaging with this understanding, because they highlight or make us reflect upon who we are as human beings. Is it possible at all to upload or transfer our personality in a digital manner? Digital entities are discrete entities, which means they're made out of ones and zeros. It's still an open question of whether our organism can be reduced to ones and zeros, or whether our organism is a continuous entity. If it is a continuous entity, then it would be, in principle, impossible to upload our personality without any loss. If you transfer a continuous entity or change it to a discrete entity, something is getting lost. Then the entire goal of us wanting to be uploaded couldn't even be realised because we'd lose something which might be an extremely important part of who we are as human beings.
But in the end, it's an open question. I don't know whether who we are, what we are, or the energy which exists is actually structured discretely or continuously. From our physical insights, there are actually hints concerning both types of understanding. So on the one hand, energy can only turn up as a multiplicity of the Planck constant. Either one time a Planck constant, twice a Planck constant, or three times a Planck constant. If that is the case, then the Planck constant could be the ones and zeros. Then the entire world and the way in which energy could be structured would be discrete. If this is the case, then mind uploading, in principle, could work.
If, on the other hand, it's the case that energy is structurally continuous, and once we craft the speed of a particle we can't locate the location of the particle, and all of this reveals to us that the world consists of continuous energies being permanently more divisible and without there being an endpoint - in that case, if this is who we actually are, then mind uploading in principle could not be possible. So philosophically, it's an extremely interesting question of whether our basic energy and what we are permanently becoming can be structured discretely or continuously. It's very interesting.
I just wouldn't want it to become politically too effective because in that way a lot of money would be wasted which could be much better spent on reducing the suffering in the world.
Mason: What happens when someone such as yourself comes out and starts talking about these ideas - these almost science-fictional ideas - in a very serious and academic way? People assume they're going to become inevitable. I wonder if there's a certain degree of danger in being an academic who has also come out as a transhumanist. I mean, how do you ethically navigate this space?
Sorgner: That actually raises the fundamental issue above of what should be dealt with at universities in general. Should you have theological departments at universities? That's what everyone's talking about there, about all of these fundamental questions. You cannot test them empirically. It's about rational speculations. They raise some very fundamental issues around what counts as a proper scientific endeavour.
I think the important thing about why I do take them seriously is because it resonates with so many people. I'm trying to say let's have a look at the implications. Let's have a look at what that would mean. How the digital world relates to the non-digital world. In principle, actually, I might go a step further and say that we are all part made out of the same kind of energy - empirically accessible energy - and energy can be transformed in a vast amount of different ways. It is also the case that every seven years, all the cells in our organisms will be replaced. But our memory and our personality get passed on. That clearly shows that the information which is attached to the cells can be passed on. So it's not necessarily directed or connected to the cells in our brain and body.
The issue gets raised: What is different with respect to carbon-based cells and silicon-based cells? Is it, in principle, possible that we can sort of transfer some of the functions and information from one of the bases to another one? It is already possible. We've realised that when realising brain-computer interface. Kevin Warwick is a wonderful example. When he was in New York and had the brain-computer interface connected to his heart, and was thinking about moving the robot hand at his laboratory in the UK to the table with sensors on the tip of his fingertips. The fingertips of the robot moving to the table, the sensors feeling the surface of the table and him being at Columbia University in the US feeling what the table feels like in the UK.
This seems to reveal that maybe between the organic and the non-organic world, there is not such a big gap. We need to investigate the possible relations in how far some of the activities or some of the information which is stored in our organic bases can actually also be stored in non-organic bases. That could also afford us a lot of further options. My memory is very bad and the memory of my hard drive is very good. If some of the issues were realisable, that would be in many human beings' interest. That is very far, and transferring some of the information from organic bases to non-organic bases is very different from having life, self-consciousness and rationality placed on a hard drive.
A lot will be possible with respect to the brain-computer interface. I'm already curious about what Nueralink will achieve in the near future. I heard they're going to start the trials later this year with humans. A lot will be possible, but that's still far away from actually having living entities, from suffering digital entities, from self-conscious living entities, from competent self-conscious living entities in cyberspace. That is science fiction. Come on. That's not going to happen. Not in the next 30 years, not in the next hundred years. If it will ever happen in the future, we'll see.
But a lot of possibilities are a given. By investigating these possibilities and taking seriously the possibilities of mind uploading, we can get a better grasp of what is worthy of trying out and what is pure science fiction.
What is extremely important in your work and the way in which you write is about engaging with the future to decide what is useful to bring into the present, and then use that to think about our current global challenges. One of the ways in which we can do that is to not just look at the figure of the transhuman or the posthuman, but something in between - the metahuman. Firstly, what is it? Secondly, how is it a useful tool with which to engage with these technologies? Not just in the future, but more importantly in the present.
So the metahuman is a concept that has originated as part of the engagement I've had - not only with the transhumanist discourses - but also as a consequence I've had with critical posthumanist discourses, which is an entirely different field.
Mason: It's a whole other podcast,
Sorgner: A whole other podcast. Not only one but several other podcasts. That is related to that postmodern, literary way of thinking that is very strong in universities. I've been engaged with both types of approaches. This techno-optimistic transhumanist approach, which I share, but I've also, philosophically, got a lot of resonance with a critical posthumanist approach, which is more rooted in the sort of continental European philosophical tradition.
I think both of these approaches are overstepping. Their boundaries are going to far. By coining the metahuman as an approach, you realise there is something extremely important in both of these approaches. It's a way of balancing and making more accessible and more plausible what is actually a realistic way of dealing with the various approaches.
In the same way as transhumanism, in the end, can lead to the expectation of us being uploaded minds in 10 years’ time. In the same way the critical posthumanists then talk about climate change as a major issue - and climate change is a major issue. That's a very important task. But if you do think climate change is the most serious challenge we need to confront, then you would have a moral obligation not to procreate, yourself. Some people might take that on and some people do take that on, but that's as absurd and as problematic as the mind-uploading option.
That's what we need to navigate. Humans have interests and these human interests also need to be taken seriously. It's not that we, as humans, aren't the major driving force of climate change - we are - but that doesn't mean it would be best if humans were banished from the earth, which some critical posthumanists take on board. It's an absolute utopian nightmare and absolute absurdity. I'm not even mentioning the names of those who talk about that suggestion because that's seriously not something which should be taken seriously in the academic context. I'm just saying throw the approach out of the window. Anyone who takes that approach and doesn't commit suicide herself should not be taken seriously either, maybe.
Mason: Wow.
Sorgner: This is maybe overstating the case, but if you say humans are the worst thing in the world or the major driving force, that has some really terrible implications, actually. I find that extremely dangerous. I do take climate change seriously and I think it's an important issue, but we need to deal with it in a different way. The metahumans approach is there. There are important factors which critical posthumanists take on board with a non-dualistic, non-essentialist and non-anthropocentric stance, which is what I'm sharing.
The same as using technologies in order to break free from the personal boundaries which we currently have does increase the likelihood of us living good lives. That's what I also share with the transhumanists. That doesn't lead me to mind uploading. So the metahuman is really that negotiating as good as it gets approached.
Mason: What I'm hearing and what I've read in the book, and what I'm hearing from this episode is that it's less about how we have a relationship with technology. The relationship with technology is almost inevitable. It's written on the front of the book. We've always been cyborgs. We've always had this transitory relationship with our technology and that relationship you can say is 'natural'. So then the question becomes: How do we then use that understanding of our relationship with nature to allow us to create the correct sort of technological solutions for the problems that we have today? How do we perhaps refocus some transhumanists on these real-world challenges in order to maintain a sustainable existence for not just humans, but all persons?
Sorgner: We definitely have to have a permanent negotiation process. We shouldn't take any of the answers for granted, and even the answers which were valid maybe just a year ago. They're no longer valid now. Actually, the best example or the best practising case was the current pandemic crisis for that. Many politicians said, “We shouldn't implement obligatory vaccinations”. Two years ago, “We'll never do that. We promise”. Now they realise maybe we should do that. I'm not even certain whether that's an appropriate stance, but it shows that some things which have been categorically taken for granted just two years ago are no longer valid because the external situation and research have brought up new information. How fast things can change, even on a cultural level.
A very good example - as you know 50 years ago, homosexuality was a criminal offence. Now marriage for all is widely taken for granted. That shows that things can change extremely quickly. It's all subject to change. We can modify things. Even the maximum lifespan is not something which we should take for granted. It's this openness for creativity and for being able to engage. Maybe some wild speculation sometimes, engaging with some crazy ideas which lead us to important breakthroughs.
In the end, it's sort of a fight against essences. A fight against stability. What Heraclitus realised - he was the first philosopher I ever read, when I was 13. I started reading Heraclitus and his words about how you can never step into the same river twice. This guiding inside I have in mind. We are all in a permanent process of continual becoming and of continual change. We are hybrids in a permanent process of change. That also means none of the insights and none of the things which we take as impossible has to be taken as such.
That doesn't mean that everything is realisable. That also in particular applies to moral insights. Morality, the good, the bad. That which was taken as unchanging and necessary and eternally valid and real - that is not the case. Morals are fiction and they are human-made fiction. You always need to look at the interests which are being served by the ones who present a certain account of the good. I affirm a certain understanding of the good, and then you look at what your underlying interests are, and the motive. Why and how far does it help you in some way? Maybe it's just the motive, the underlying instinct and the advantage, which is why you affirm that kind of concept of the good. In particular, when it comes to morals which are being affirmed as eternally valid or unchanging, this is where it gets dangerous and absurd.
I've had a recent discussion with a German realist philosopher. He basically said, “No, of course, human dignity exists. There's the essence of human dignity. That's something eternal and an essentially valid moral insight.” Then you just wonder, I mean, you are a very clever, highly intelligent guy. There was a Big Bang. There was the expansion process. The earth came about four billion years ago. Humans and apes, our last common ancestors, lived about six million years ago. Human dignity as it's present in the German foundational law has just waited 14 billion years to unfold itself in the German constitution. You cannot be real. That's just absolutely absurd. That's the stance concerning all of the _lifting your eyebrow_ high moralities which claim universal validity. You realise the importance of also embracing norms as being contingent, as being fictitious. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be effective. It's important to have them, but it's also important to regard that they are human-made and that they can be altered.
All I'm presenting are fiction. I'm trying to convince you, and trying to show their possibility. Luckily, many of these insights are being shown and are being shared by many people. But that doesn't mean that they are in any way better founded or in any way have a better metaphysical foundation than what anyone else affirmed. It's this - the permanent contingency - which I think is an enormously important achievement, also in order to avoid violence being done to other persons and to increase the plurality and diversity of human flourishing which is a wonderful, wonderful goal. I try to promote it in permanently different ways because there will never be a perfect state in which it can be fully realised.
Mason: Well, there we have it. We should stay open to a multitude of possibilities. Stefan, this is exactly the reason why I started this podcast - to have discussions like this. It certainly feels like we could have a podcast episode on every single chapter of your book and every single section, in fact of, of your book. On that note, I just want to thank you for being a guest on the FUTURES Podcast.
Sorgner: Oh, many thanks for having me. It's been a great pleasure. It's always a great pleasure meeting you and talking to you. I'm looking forward to doing so in person again, hopefully sometime soon.
Mason: Thank you to Stefan for showing us how the future human could be defined by either silicon-based or carbon-based transhumanist technologies.
You can find out more by purchasing his new book, 'We Have Always Been Cyborgs: Digital Data, Gene Technologies, and the Ethics of Transhumanism', available now.
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Transcription: Beth Colquhoun
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