Identity, Institutions and Governance in an AI World: Transhuman Relations

By Peter Bloom

The 21st century is on the verge of a possible total economic and political revolution. Technological advances in robotics, computing and digital communications have the potential to completely transform how people live and work. Even more radically, humans will soon be interacting with artificial intelligence (A.I.) as a normal and essential part of their daily existence. What is needed now more than ever is to rethink social relations to meet the challenges of this soon-to-arrive "smart" world. This book proposes an original theory of trans-human relations for this coming future. Drawing on insights from organisational studies, critical theory, psychology and futurism - it will chart for readers the coming changes to identity, institutions and governance in a world populated by intelligent human and non-human actors alike. It will be characterised by a fresh emphasis on infusing programming with values of social justice, protecting the rights and views of all forms of "consciousness" and creating the structures and practices necessary for encouraging a culture of "mutual intelligent design". To do so means moving beyond our anthropocentric worldview of today and expanding our assumptions about the state of tomorrow's politics, institutions, laws and even everyday existence. Critically such a profound shift demands transcending humanist paradigms of a world created for and by humans and instead opening ourselves to a new reality where non-human intelligence and cyborgs are increasingly central.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Jan 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9783030361815

Peter Bloom

Peter Bloom heads the People and Organisations Department at the Open University, UK. His recent books include The CEO Society: The Corporate Takeover of Everyday Life (Zed, 2018) and The Ethics of Neoliberalism: The Business of Making Capitalism Moral (Routledge, 2017). His writing has featured in the Washington Post, Guardian, and New Statesman.

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© The Author(s) 2020

P. BloomIdentity, Institutions and Governance in an AI Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36181-5_1

1. Introduction: Preparing for a Transhuman Future

Peter Bloom¹  

(1)

University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Peter Bloom

Email: [e-mail]

Imagine walking down the street of any city, turning the corner and seeing a new business between the restaurants, bars, and shops. It is not selling food or clothes but something much more carna and mechanised—sex with robots. If this sounds like a far off dystopian future, think again. Robot Brothels are being planned to open in major cities such as London and Moscow across the world. In Toronto, this is already a reality, as the company revealingly titled Kinky S Dolls has designed human looking female robots with Artificial Intelligence to rent out an intimate room located in their warehouse for 30 minutes or an hour. By 2018, they had already attracted over 500 customers (Yuen 2018).

While seen as perhaps perverse oddity when first opened in Toronto, the idea of a robot brothel started a much larger and more profound debate when the company tried to expand their business to the US city of Houston. The owner Yuval Gavriel saw it merely as a business opportunity, declaring The States is a bigger market, and a healthier market, and God bless Trump (quoted in Dart 2018: n.p.). However, community groups and the Mayor passionately opposed the move, starting a petition for its prevention signed by over 12,600 residents. According to a member of the group Elijah Rising—who tries to raise awareness about the city’s sex trafficking problem—that We want to see the end of this systemic problem. We said, this robot thing looks very similar to pornography, in that when men engage with pornography it sort of detaches them from any sort of human relation, and we’ve noticed that with sex buyers (ibid.: n.p.) Addressing the issue from a more global and future oriented perspective, Professor Kathleen Richardson (founder of the Campaign Against Sex Robots) declared:

Sex dolls are merely a new niche market in the sex trade. While these dolls are hidden from the public at the present there is nothing stopping any of the buyers taking their ‘sex doll’ to the supermarket, on the school run, or in any public space. Therefore we have to consider the dolls as a form of 3D pornography. There are also issues about what happens when you normalise a culture where women as the prostituted become visibly and openly interchangeable with dolls. (Ibid.: n.p.)

The above example is obviously extreme. Yet it is indicative of the ways we still view society and through a human—centric lense. Our focus remains firmly on how technology will impact humanity, in this respect. Missing is an enlarged perspective that considers the effects on non-humans-whether that be AI, animal, or even climatic. Such a transhuman perspective is especially urgent as human relations are rapidly evolving into transhuman relations. The gowring presence of robots, computerisation, and AI are forcing us to existentially rethink how we conceive of intelligence, interpersonal relations, and or social existence.

The first chapter will introduce the main theme of the book—how can humans prepare today for a transhuman tomorrow. In particular one where we share the world with a range of new and emerging forms of smart consciousness. Questions will be asked such as whether existing perspectives on human relations are sufficient for a coming age where the internet of everything is a daily and global reality. Will robots have human rights? Will individuals apply for the same jobs as a conscious automated employee? Can humans and A.I. learn from each other to create new forms of knowledge and social relations?

The chapter will begin by highlighting the imminent emergence of a smart world and what this means. It will then explore the fears and hopes these changes will bring—ranging from dystopian visions of a robot-controlled future to utopian hopes of a technologically enlightened society. Following this critical discussion, it will focus on the almost complete lack of thinking (either from academics or policy makers) surrounding the concrete cultural norms, ethical concerns, laws and public administration required to make this an empowering rather than disempowering shift. It will conclude by highlighting the need for humans to fundamentally evolve their thinking, practices and physical existence to meet the challenges and opportunities of this new smart revolution.

Aim

The twenty-first century is on the verge of a possible total economic and political revolution. Technological advances in robotics, computing and digital communications have the potential to completely transform how people live and work. Even more radically, humans will soon be interacting with artificial intelligence (A.I.) as a normal and essential part of their daily existence. What is needed now more than ever is to rethink social relations to meet the challenges of this soon-to-arrive smart world.

This book proposes an original theory of transhuman relations for this coming future. Drawing on insights from org studies, critical theory, psychology and futurism—it will chart for readers the coming changes to identity, institutions and governance in a world populated by intelligent human and non-human actors alike. It will be characterised by a fresh emphasis on infusing programming with values of social justice, protecting the rights and views of all forms of consciousness and creating the structures and practices necessary for encouraging a culture of mutual intelligent design. To do so means moving beyond our anthropocentric worldview of today and expanding our assumptions about the state of tomorrow’s politics, institutions, laws and even everyday existence. Critically such a profound shift demands transcending humanist paradigms of a world created for and by humans and instead opening ourselves to a new reality where non-human intelligence and cyborgs are increasingly central.

Towards Transhuman Relations?

In 2017 The World Economic Forum released a report tellingly entitled AI: Utopia or Dystopia (Boden 2017). Its findings were suitably cautious, warning people against fantasies or fears of a singularity in which machines overtake humans in intelligence and power. Yet it did strike a serious warning of the risks created by the rise of AI, declaring that

we should be prudently pessimistic—not to say dystopian—about the future. AI has worrying implications for the military, individual privacy, and employment. Automated weapons already exist, and they could eventually be capable of autonomous target selection. As Big Data becomes more accessible to governments and multinational corporations, our personal information is being increasingly compromised. And as AI takes over more routine activities, many professionals will be deskilled and displaced. The nature of work itself will change, and we may need to consider providing a universal income, assuming there is still a sufficient tax base through which to fund it (Boden 2017: n.p.)

These insights reflect the growing awareness that humanity is rapidly approaching a fundamental transformation. More than a mere updating of our current social and economic order, emerging technologies will disrupt for good or ill how we live, work, and even think. Even the most capitalist and elitist institutions, those at the heart of the current status quo, are acknowledging this coming radical change. According to a 2013 report released by the Mckinsey Global Institute entitled Disruptive Technologies: Advances that will Transform Life, Business, and the Global Economy:

the results of our research show that business leaders and policy makers—and society at large—will confront change on many fronts: in the way businesses organize themselves, how jobs are defined, how we use technology to interact with the world (and with each other), and, in the case of next-generation genomics, how we understand and manipulate living things. There will be disruptions to established norms, and there will be broad societal challenges. Nevertheless, we see considerable reason for optimism. Many technologies on the horizon offer immense opportunities. We believe that leaders can seize these opportunities, if they start preparing now. (Manyika et al. 2013: 4–5)

Indeed, the theorist Francis Fukuyama (1999) who after the Cold War triumphantly announced the end of history and the assured global victory of Liberal Democracy, admitted only a decade later by the end of the century that humanity is undergoing a Great Disruption. Tellingly, he still holds out optimism, given that in his view humans have a unique ability to confront these challenges and their own biological nature for a greater common good, as

It is, of course, both easy and dangerous to draw facile comparisons between animal and human behavior. Human beings are different from chimpanzees precisely because they do have culture and reason, and can modify their genetically controlled behavior in any number of complex ways. (Ibid.: 165)

Yet what actually is being disrupted? How will these technologies really impact society? On the one hand, AI promises no less than to revolutionize firms and society (Makridakis 2017). In the face of this revolution, there is an increasing desire to ensure that above all these disruptive changes remain human centred. Yet underneath this growing wave of voices wanting to save humanity from a technological takeover, is an undercurrent of critical perspectives embracing the possibilities to go beyond current human assumptions and limitations. In fields such as architecture, this could have profound and quite revolutionary philosophical and practical effects as:

In this age of unprecedented technological progress, we can no longer ask what is man? without examining what we think man will become. In the field of architecture such an examination necessitates considering both what and for whom we will be building in the decades to come. Since the expansion of information and communication technologies in the beginning of the 1990s, the most forward-thinking architects have been asking these very questions. More specifically, digital architects have been among the first in the field, if not the first, to become interested in the effects of technological advancements not only on architectural design and the built environment of the future, but also on society as a whole and on our physical, psychological, and cultural evolution. Thus they have constructed future world visions often impregnated with post-humanist and transhumanist currents of thought. (Roussel 2018: 77)

Contained within the rise of AI and robotics is a chance to transcend the rather narrow and often historically destructive humanist imagination (Åsberg et al. 2011). In its place is the evolution from homo sapiens to homo biotechnologicus since The biotechnology of today’s world means that humanity is set on a path to transcending its own human nature, with all the risky consequences that entails (Višňovský 2015: 230).

What these exciting or terrifying depictions of the near future, depending on your point of view, ignore are the needs of non-humans. Tellingly, humans view themselves quite similarly in relation to both robots and animals. If computers represent an automated unfeeling coming reality, animals are a present reminder of our wild and savage pasts. The human, for all our acknowledged faults, is still in the popular imagination the only being that can make decisions based on morality and empathy. Despite our history marked by wars, genocide, exploitation, and ecological devastation—humanity retains its supposedly unique status of leading an ethical and good existence. We may not be perfect, indeed far from it, the reasoning goes, but the alternatives are even worse. In this respect, human progress and potential is confined to socially constructed boundaries of humanness, largely dismissing non-human forms of intelligence and being (Laurie 2015).

There are alternatives though—ones that gesture toward a different type of social order where humans are not at its centre. The pioneering social theorist Braidotti (2018) calls, in this regard, for a focusing away from the ‘naturecultural’ and ‘humananimal’ and instead on the primacy of intelligent and self-organizing matter. Revealed is a brave new world where humans co-exist with AI, animals, plant life, and everyday objects as equals, in which the lines which traditionally separate us blur and continue to evolve. While for many this is a future scenario to fear, with critical reflection it also serves as an opportunity to expand human potential and positively reconfigure our relationship to other intelligent beings and lifeforms. Importantly, such radical possibilities, a democratization of subjects, necessitates an ongoing, persistent deconstruction of the anthropocentric values all too often linked to recent trends in social media, artificial intelligence, genetic enhancements, predictive analytics, digital surveillance, and so on (Igrek 2015: 92).

Gestured toward is the potential for the transition from human relations to transhuman relations. What is suggested is neither utopian nor dystopian. Rather it is an effort to invoke a modern Copernican revolution in the human view of their social universe, challenging their anthropocentric understandings which places themselves at its centre. Instead, disruptive technologies can catalyze a reconfiguration of what we value, allowing for a renewed appreciation of diverse intelligences and ways of being. To this end,

An insurgent posthumanism would contribute to the everyday making of alternative ontologies: the exit of people into a common material world (not just a common humanity); the embodiment—literally—of radical left politics; finally the exodus to a materialist, nonanthropocentric view of history. These engagements are driven by the question of justice as a material, processual and practical issue before its regulation though political representation. Alter-ontology: justice engrained into cells, muscles, limbs, space, things, plants and animals. Justice is before the event of contemporary left politics; it is about moulding alternative forms of life. (Papadopoulos 2010)

Yet it will also require a willingness to grapple with the complex and challenging problems this shift in consciousness raises politically, economically, organisationally, and legally.

What Is Transhuman Relations?

If we are nearing the end of the era of human, or at least their perceived supremacy, this raises an important question. What precisely is transhumanism? The answer to this seemingly simple question is not always so straightforward. To a certain degree, it can be viewed as a philosophy which seeks to better understand the human future in the face of rapid changes in science and technology (see More 2013). As such, it is a philosophical intervention that is committed to reinterrogating fundamental conceptions of who we are and what we can become. However, it is also an ideal embracing the potential of technology for enhancing human capability. According to the renowned transhuman philosopher Gagnon (2012: n.p.)

The transhuman ideal is based upon a reconception of evolution, a perfecting and transcending of the human race through the next step in progress: not through biological mutation but through science and technology. H+ (a common abbreviation) means the enhancement of human beings as a whole, the inevitable advance of our species which combines biology with technology, enhancing our bodies and brains with scientific innovation, seeking to overcome the limitations of our flesh.

The perhaps immediate worry is that transhumanism is equivalent to dehumanization. Put differently, that in its attempts to transcend human limitations it will ultimately lead to destroying of our most sacred human qualities as well as the practical erosions of our social freedoms and free will. In particular, the rejection of humanist truths and belief in any inherent human nature, perspectives most associated with post-structuralism and influencing much of transhuman thought, risk ignoring all that is good about humanity and worth preserving (see Porpora 2017). However, rather than a direct challenge to this humanism, it is perhaps more valuable and accurate to see transhumanism as engaging a fruitful debate about what our future holds. Quoting William Grassie and Gregory R. Hansell (2010: 14) in the introduction to their celebrated recent collection of Transhumanism and its Critics at length

The debate about transhumanism is an extremely fruitful field for philosophical and theological inquiry. The last hundred years of human evolution have seen remarkable scientific and technological transformations. If the pace of change continues and indeed accelerates in the twenty-first century, then in short order, we will be a much-transformed species on a much-transformed planet. The idea of some fixed human nature, a human essence from which we derive notions of humane dignities and essential human rights, no longer applies in this brave new world of free market evolution. On what basis then do we make moral judgments and pursue pragmatic ends? Should we try to limit the development of certain sciences and technologies? How would we do so? Is it even possible? Are either traditional religious or Enlightenment values adequate at a speciation horizon between humans and posthumans when nature is just not what it used to be anymore? Is the ideology of transhumanism dangerous independent of the technology? Is the ideology of the bioconservatives, those who oppose transhumanism, also dangerous and how? Are the new sciences and technologies celebrated by transhumanists realistic or just another form of wishful thinking? And which utopic and dystopic visions have the power to illuminate and motivate the future?

Significantly, transhumanism is not so much a complete break with the past as it is an attempt to philosophically and practically theorise its evolution. In the words of perhaps the most famous transhumanist thinker Nick Bostrom, Transhumanist view human nature as a work-in-progress (2005: 1). It demands, in turn, a healthy dose of skepticism and open mindedness, since it is a dynamic philosophy, intended to evolve as new information becomes available or challenges emerge. One transhumanist value is therefore to cultivate a questioning attitude and a willingness to revise one’s beliefs and assumptions (Bostrom 2001).

How does transhumanism though differ from another similar sounding concept of posthumanism? For most people who are not familiar with these ideas and who understandably do not spend a huge amount of time thinking of about a future with a radically altered humanity, these possible differences can seem both semantic and irrelevant. And indeed as the final quote in the previous section suggests, the potentials of transhumanism share much with desires for an insurgent posthumanism. Yet their contrasts are relevant and worth identifying. Posthumanism, in this respect, broadly represents a desire to completely move beyond historical notions of being human—philosophically, culturally, and politically rejecting ideas of human nature and human rule. This definition is, of course, quite a broad brush for such as sophisticated and rich vein of thinking. Nevertheless, what all the various strands of posthumanism have in common—from anti-humanism to voluntary human extinction to accelerationism—is the embracing of our demise (Wolfe 2010). Consequently, according to Fuller (2018) posthumanism and transhumanism provide alternative mappings of the spaces of political possibility for moving beyond and challenging our morphology from an upright ape:

Posthumanists stress our overlap with other species and interdependency with nature, while transhumanists stress the variability and mutability of genes, which allow enhancement. Posthumanist sociology emphasizes the superorganic biological and evolutionary roots of social behavior, while transhumanists emphasize humanity’s extension into technology and our accelerating cultural evolution. Both posthumanists and transhumanists see our simian nature as a platform or way station that opens up into a much wider range of possible ancestors and descendants than conventional politics normally countenances. (Fuller 2018: 151)

Nevertheless, each of these perspectives help to redefine established human ethics and relations. For this reason, Huxley (2015: 12) refers to transhumanism as an ethics in progress, one which will continually confront the moral and social issues arising from our use of technology to enhance and change our nature and selves. This ethical imperative points to the possibility of a moral transhumanism in fields such as health in which biomedical research and therapy should make humans in the biological sense more human in the moral sense, even if they cease to be human in the biological sense (Persson and Savulescu 2010: 656). Perhaps more fundamentally, it allows for a timely ethics that reconfigures our relationships with each other and those that populate our world. As noted by leading posthumanist critical thinker Cecilia Åsberg (2013: 8) Posthumanist ethics…emerge as efforts to respect and meet well with, even extend care to, others while acknowledging that we may not know the other and what the best kind of care would be.

It is for this reason perhaps to think of transhumanisms and posthumanisms, in the plural, than any singular definition of transhumanism. Significantly, these perspectives are not a priori incompatible with established theological views of the human soul (see Mercer and Trothen 2014). Rather it reframes humans as ultimately relational beings in which, at least from a Christian viewpoint, the dimension that is decisive for resurrection is the relation of the soul to God (Peters 2005: 381). The point here is not to posit onto transhumanism or posthumanism any inherent religious connotations or to support one theological interpretation of them over another. Instead, it is too highlight how versatile these philosophies are, able to speak to a wide range of existing and emerging ideas on the human condition. Indeed, transhumanism runs the risks of ethically reproducing past logics of morally troubling discourses such as eugenics for which individual and social progress are primarily associated with genetic manipulation (See Koch 2010). Similarly, the Enlightenment historical roots of transhumanism can without proper critical attention lead it to reinforce a number of problematic modernist outcomes including giving birth to new theologies and politically fostering technocratic authoritarianism (Hughes 2010).

While recognizing these dangers, transhumanism can also serve as a type of present day hope for positively dealing with an uncertain future. As one self-proclaimed follower of this lifestyle proclaimed

transhumanists, through their worldviews and lifestyle choices, and through their ability to deal with and better understand the changes on the horizon, are putting themselves in a better position than most to anticipate and apply the coming technologies to their lives and their bodies; they are inoculating themselves against future shock. Transhumanists hope that future advancements will work to the benefit of humanity, and that missing out on this potential, either because of sweeping bans or preventable catastrophes, would be a travesty (Dvorsky 2008: n.p.)

It offers the potential, furthermore, for achieving a realistic immortality in the relatively near future, one based not on any ecclesiastical notion of eternal salvation but instead having more time to pursue our own interests, passions, and self-development (Gelles 2009). However, as attractive as these optimistic visions of transhumanism may be they still too often fall into the trap of anthropocentrism—placing the human above all other forms of life and intelligences. It is assumption that we are not simply one among many species but are privileged by virtue of our capacity to understand the entirety of the evolutionary process—indeed courtesy of computer models as if we had designed (but not determined) that process (Fuller and Lipinska 2014: 6).

At stake then is envisioning a transhuman and posthuman perspective that neither focuses simply on either enhancing or transcending humanity. Instead, to take seriously the need to respect and learn from that which is non-human. To conceive and start to build a future based on shared knowledge and mutually beneficial relations. In which human potential is intertwined with our interaction with animals, technology, and objects in our world.

The Artificial Road to Heaven or Hell?

The potential creation of a Transhuman society though should not be confused with either utopianism or dystopianism. Indeed, most depictions of our future are defined by their perceived optimism or pessimism about the world to come. They exaggerate the possibilities for our opportunities to progress into a more egalitarian, just, and happy civilization or our descent into even greater inequality, oppression, and misery. To this end, they reveal more often about our presents than being accurate predictions of our future. It is not surprising, for instance, that Orwell wrote 1984 in a time of fascism and totalitarianism nor that the corporate dystopia of Blade Runner and Brazil became popular as the new era of neoliberalism began to dawn. The current embrace and fear of technology mirrors this simultaneous contemporary excitement and terror of our present day reality.

Transhumanism and posthumanism, hence, offer a vision of a coming world different than our own. Amidst their philosophical and political differences, they articulate an alternative set of values and assumptions for reconfiguring social relations. So-called converging technologies—including nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technology—represent a broader desire to bring these emerging scientific advances together for the purpose of improving human performance. However, commentators such as Coenen (2007: 156) have warned against thinking of posthumanism as necessarily utopian as is mainly concerned with technological construction of new beings to complement or replace humanity. It tends strongly towards quasi-religious visions of the abolition of temporal limits on individual consciousness, in which the ego is preserved and death outwitted by various technological means Nevertheless, in 2005 the World Transhumanist Organisation proclaimed as article 1 of its Transhumanist declaration that

Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth. (quoted in Coenen 2007: 145)

It is, in this regard, a challenge to the current era—utopian not simply because of its romanticized promises but also in that for many it still seems to be a no place, mere fantasy rather ever nearing reality. Yet as AI, automation, and robotics become ever more prominent parts of modern human life, it is progressively becoming into a matter of when rather than if.

This has produced, in turn, a growing technological optimism. It is a sweeping cultural faith in the ability of digital advances to solve all our most pressing problems. It is a techno-utopian discourse which

conceive technology not as a force of disenchantment but as a re-enchantment of our contemporary world. They revolve around different kinds of emerging technologies, some of them outright futuristic like artificial superintelligence or (post-)human enhancement (Kurzweil 2005); some apparently in the making, like synthetic biology and autonomous cars; others—like 3D printing and ‘Big Data’—already existing and associated with boundless future potentials. (Dickel and Schrape 2017a: 289–290)

Running throughout much of transhuman thought, hence, are themes of the salvationary qualities of technology. Here, disruptive advances serve the needs of humanity even while unrecognizably transforming them (Hauskeller 2012). The combination of foreignness and increasing familiarity of transhuman and posthuman perspectives can make them seen like a time capsule from an already existing and tantalizingly close future, a figurative letter from utopia (Bostrom 2008). There is a pronounced danger though in the stifling of actual innovation in the here and now—the hard work of creating the concrete conditions for such an exciting tomorrow—by always continuing to look ahead as if it is somehow predestined and just waiting for humanity to arrive (Dickel and Schrape 2017b).

At the other end of the social spectrum, is a profound disquiet tied up with these disruptive technological advances. These fears go beyond modern updatings of Luddite wholesale rejections of technology. Rather, they represent the anger and pessimism of an age marked by rising inequality, economic insecurity, social dislocation, and political upheaval. Reflected is a serious and deep dystopian imagination questioning the ability of humanity historically and perhaps fundamentally to use AI and robotics for anything other than personal gain and mass exploitation (Gruenwald 2013). This is not mere idle pessimism, moreover. It signifies a real concern over the contemporary policies and assumptions driving changes to the existing social order. New advances in reproductive genetics—or reprogenetics for short—can socially reproduce and reintroduce morally troubling historical ideas such as eugenics, by appealing to contemporary values such as market choice. It reveals a worrying recent enthusiasm regarding ‘liberal eugenics,’ claiming that reprogenetic decisions should be left to individual consumers thus enhancing their options in the health market (Raz 2009: 602).

Emerging are competing ideas of what awaits humanity in the twenty-first century and afterwards. If there is agreement, it is that human society is on the verge of a dramatic transformation. Beyond this common ground there are contested futures—each depicting paths that that new technologies can lead us down for reconfiguring who we are and how we live (Brown and Rappert 2017). That we as a social species are evolving seems ever clearer, but whether this will be progress are not remains ambiguous at best (Verdoux 2009). Just as significantly, these visions of the future are constitutive of how we conceive and act upon the possibilities of human enhancement in the present (Coenen 2014).

Digging deeper though these opposing visions of a hi-tech future share another distinct feature. They remain by and large quite human-centred despite paradoxically prophesizing humanity’s destruction. Transhumanism is not simply utopian in the same way as the humanisms of Marx or B.F. Skinner notes Professor Fred Baumann (2010: 68), rather, it is qualitatively different in that it ‘goes beyond’, avowedly disregarding and leaving behind human beings themselves—the very beings that were the central concern of all previous humanisms.

They are fixated on human progress or destruction, mirroring past religious themes of salvation vs. the prophesized apocalypse (Burdett 2014). At the centre of these predicted worlds to come is the making of a new man (Saage 2013). However, fresh tough this new man may appear, they are stuck in a past historical worldview defined by anthropocentrism. More precisely, repeating in utopian or dystopian ways an age old story of man battling the elements, the wildness of nature now being replaced by metallic terror of technology. It offers a way to reimagine our bodily existence, transcending existing physical human limitations, while keeping the faith of humanity’s ultimately privileged position in the social universe (Marques 2013).

Required instead is to truly remake humanity’s view of themselves and their world.