This book explores Technological Human Enhancement Advocacy through ethnographically inspired participant observation across a range of sites. James Michael MacFarlane argues that such advocacy is characterized by ‘Techno-centrism,' a belief grounded in today’s world while being also future-oriented and drawn from the imagination. This blurring of ‘real’ and ‘imagined’ futures borrows from the materialist grounding of the scientific worldview, while granting extended license to visions for technology as an enabler of forward-facing action, which include reviving humanist ideals associated with the modernization project. While Techno-centrism is arguably most pronounced in transhumanism—where it is acted-out in extreme, almost hyperbolic ways—it reflects more generally held, deep-seeded concerns around the future of science, technology and human self-identity in the new millennium. Far from being new, these emerging social forms capture unresolved ambivalences which have long cast a shadow over late-modern society and culture.

Transhumanism posits that humanity is on the verge of rapid evolutionary change as a result of emerging technologies and increased global consciousness. However, this insight is dismissed as a naive and controversial reframing of posthumanist thought, having also been vilified as “the most dangerous idea in the world” by Francis Fukuyama. In this book, Andrew Pilsch counters these critiques, arguing instead that transhumanism’s utopian rhetoric actively imagines radical new futures for the species and its habitat. Pilsch situates contemporary transhumanism within the longer history of a rhetorical mode he calls “evolutionary futurism” that unifies diverse texts, philosophies, and theories of science and technology that anticipate a radical explosion in humanity’s cognitive, physical, and cultural potentialities. By conceptualizing transhumanism as a rhetoric, as opposed to an obscure group of fringe figures, he explores the intersection of three major paradigms shaping contemporary Western intellectual life: cybernetics, evolutionary biology, and spiritualism. In analyzing this collision, his work traces the belief in a digital, evolutionary, and collective future through a broad range of texts written by theologians and mystics, biologists and computer scientists, political philosophers and economic thinkers, conceptual artists and Golden Age science fiction writers. Unearthing the long history of evolutionary futurism, Pilsch concludes, allows us to more clearly see the novel contributions that transhumanism offers for escaping our current geopolitical bind by inspiring radical utopian thought.

Through a detailed exploration of the study of transhumanism, this book introduces students to the discipline of cultural anthropology.

Examining the transhumanist movement, biblical ethicist Jacob Shatzer grapples with the potential for technology to transform the way we think about what it means to be human. Exploring the doctrine of incarnation and topics such as artificial intelligence, robotics, medical technology, and communications tools, he guides us into careful consideration of the future of Christian discipleship in a disruptive technological environment.

The first authoritative and comprehensive survey of the origins and current state of transhumanist thinking The rapid pace of emerging technologies is playing an increasingly important role in overcoming fundamental human limitations. Featuring core writings by seminal thinkers in the speculative possibilities of the posthuman condition, essays address key philosophical arguments for and against human enhancement, explore the inevitability of life extension, and consider possible solutions to the growing issues of social and ethical implications and concerns. Edited by the internationally acclaimed founders of the philosophy and social movement of transhumanism, The Transhumanist Reader is an indispensable guide to our current state of knowledge of the quest to expand the frontiers of human nature.

This visionary new book explores the critical issues that link transhumanism with digitalisation, gene technologies and ethics. It examines the history and meaning of transhumanism, offering insightful reflections on values, norms and utopia.

“This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” —New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our bodies—our capabilities, intelligence, and lifespans—in the hopes that, through technology, we can become something better than ourselves. It has found support among Silicon Valley billionaires and some of the world’s biggest businesses. In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries that present themselves when you of think of your body as a device. He visits the world's foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death. He discovers an underground collective of biohackers, implanting electronics under their skin to enhance their senses. He meets a team of scientists urgently investigating how to protect mankind from artificial superintelligence. Where is our obsession with technology leading us? What does the rise of AI mean not just for our offices and homes, but for our humanity? Could the technologies we create to help us eventually bring us to harm? Addressing these questions, O'Connell presents a profound, provocative, often laugh-out-loud-funny look at an influential movement. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.

As a movement, transhumanism aims to upgrade the human body through science, constantly pushing back the limits of a person by using cutting-edge technologies to fix the human body and upgrade it beyond its natural abilities. Transhumanism can not only change human habits, but it can also change learning practices. By improving human learning, it improves the human organism beyond natural and biological limits. The Handbook of Research on Learning in the Age of Transhumanism is an essential research publication that discusses global values, norms, and ethics that relate to the diverse needs of learners in the digital world and addresses future priorities and needs for transhumanism. The book will identify and scrutinize the needs of learners in the age of transhumanism and examine best practices for transhumanist leaders in learning. Featuring topics such as cybernetics, pedagogy, and sociology, this book is ideal for educators, trainers, instructional designers, curriculum developers, professionals, researchers, academicians, policymakers, and librarians.

This book offers a social, political, and aesthetic critique of transhumanism and of the accelerating growth of scientific knowledge generally. Rather than improving our lives, science and technology today increasingly leave us debilitated and infantilized. It is time to restrain the runaway ambitions of technoscientific knowledge. The transhumanist goal of human enhancement encapsulates a range of dangerous social pathologies. Like transhumanism itself, these pathologies are rooted in, or in reaction to, the ethos of ‘more’. It’s a cultural love affair with excess, which is prompted by the libertarian standards of our cultural productions. But the attempt to live at the speed of an electron is destined for failure. In response, the author offers a naturalistic account of human flourishing where we attend to the natural rhythms of life. The interdisciplinary orientation of Transhumanism, Nature, and the Ends of Science makes it relevant to scholars and students across a wide range of disciplines, including social and political philosophy, philosophy of technology, science and technology studies, environmental studies, and public policy.

This collection of original articles, a sequel of sorts to the 2009 Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension (Palgrave Macmillan), is the first sustained reflection, by scholars with expertise in the faith traditions, on how the transhumanist agenda might impact the body.