Category Archives: Transhuman News

Transhuman or trans-human is an intermediary form between the human and the hypothetical posthuman.[1]

The use of the term "transhuman" goes back to French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote in his 1949 book The Future of Mankind:

Liberty: that is to say, the chance offered to every man (by removing obstacles and placing the appropriate means at his disposal) of 'trans-humanizing' himself by developing his potentialities to the fullest extent.[2]

And in a 1951 unpublished revision of the same book:

In consequence one is the less disposed to reject as unscientific the idea that the critical point of planetary Reflection, the fruit of socialization, far from being a mere spark in the darkness, represents our passage, by Translation or dematerialization, to another sphere of the Universe: not an ending of the ultra-human but its accession to some sort of trans-humanity at the ultimate heart of things.[3]

In 1957 book New Bottles for New Wine, English evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley wrote:

The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature. "I believe in transhumanism": once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.[4]

One of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the Human" at The New School of New York City in the 1960s, used "transhuman" as shorthand for "transitional human". Calling transhumans the "earliest manifestation of new evolutionary beings", FM argued that signs of transhumans included physical and mental augmentations including prostheses, reconstructive surgery, intensive use of telecommunications, a cosmopolitan outlook and a globetrotting lifestyle, androgyny, mediated reproduction (such as in vitro fertilisation), absence of religious beliefs, and a rejection of traditional family values.[5]

FM-2030 used the concept of transhuman as an evolutionary transition, outside the confines of academia, in his contributing final chapter to the 1972 anthology Woman, Year 2000.[6] In the same year, American cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger contributed to conceptualization of "transhumanity" in his book Man into Superman.[7] In 1982, American Natasha Vita-More authored a statement titled Transhumanist Arts Statement and outlined what she perceived as an emerging transhuman culture.[8]

Many thinkers[which?] as of 2013[update] do not regard FM-2030's characteristics as essential attributes of a transhuman. However, analyzing the possible transitional nature of the human species has been and continues to be of primary interest to anthropologists and philosophers within and outside the intellectual movement of transhumanism.[1]

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Transhuman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eclipse Phase Transhuman by Posthuman Studios [PDF]
download link: http://www.rarbes.com/eclipse-phase-transhuman-by-posthuman-studios-pdf/ Eclipse Phase Transhuman by Posthuman Studios [PDF]

By: Janis Chisman

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Eclipse Phase Transhuman by Posthuman Studios [PDF] - Video

Humanity+ @Conferences

Our Humanity+ conferences explore innovations of science and technology and their relationship to humanity. Recent conferences have been held at San Francisco State University, Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, Parsons The New School for Design in New York City, California Technology Institute, and Harvard University.

H+ Magazine covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing humans in fundamental ways. H+ Magazine aims to reflect the newest edge culture by featuring creative expressions of humanity on a razors edge where daily life and science fiction seem to be merging.

This is a brand new world-wide holiday! Future Day is slated for every March 1st. Become a Friend of Future Day and work with us all together, across the world, to get Future Day off to an incredible start!

The 2013 H+ Virtual edu TV series is a discussion series on provocative questions about emerging and speculative technologies of human enhancement and life extension, ethics, and how our cultureand how technology plays a key role inthe narratives we form. Located atteleXLR8.

Join a Chapter or start one! There are many possible activities for local groups, from purely social gatherings to study groups and speaker series. All local chapters are autonomous, except insofar as we recognize and cooperate with you.

The Humanity+ Student Network is an international coalition of student organizations dedicated to discussing transhumanist ideas. The H+SN and its member groups seek to provide opportunities for university-level work and research in exploring the promises and perils of technology and the future of humanity.

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Humanity+ | Elevating the Human Condition

This article is about the futurist ideology and movement. For the critique of humanism, see posthumanism. For the pattern of seasonal migration, see transhumance.

Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.[1] Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as study the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies. They predict that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".[1]

The contemporary meaning of the term transhumanism was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the Human" at The New School in the 1960s, when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and worldviews transitional to "posthumanity" as "transhuman".[2] This hypothesis would lay the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More to begin articulating the principles of transhumanism as a futurist philosophy in 1990, and organizing in California an intelligentsia that has since grown into the worldwide transhumanist movement.[2][3][4]

Influenced by seminal works of science fiction, the transhumanist vision of a transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters and detractors from a wide range of perspectives.[2] Transhumanism has been characterized by one critic, Francis Fukuyama, as among the world's most dangerous ideas,[5] to which Ronald Bailey countered that it is rather the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity".[6]

According to Nick Bostrom,[1]transcendentalist impulses have been expressed at least as far back as in the quest for immortality in the Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as historical quests for the Fountain of Youth, Elixir of Life, and other efforts to stave off aging and death.

There is debate about whether the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche can be considered an influence on transhumanism despite its exaltation of the "bermensch" (overman), due to its emphasis on self-actualization rather than technological transformation.[1][7][8][9]

The fundamental ideas of transhumanism were first mooted in 1923 by the British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane in his essay Daedalus: Science and the Future, which predicted that great benefits would come from applications of advanced sciences to human biology and that every such advance would first appear to someone as blasphemy or perversion, "indecent and unnatural". In particular, he was interested in the development of the science of eugenics, ectogenesis (creating and sustaining life in an artificial environment) and the application of genetics to improve human characteristics, such as health and intelligence.

His article prompted a spate of academic and popular interest; - J. D. Bernal, a crystallographer at Cambridge, wrote The World, the Flesh and the Devil in 1929, in which he speculated on the prospects of space colonization and radical changes to human bodies and intelligence through bionic implants and cognitive enhancement.[10] These ideas have been common transhumanist themes ever since.[1]

The biologist Julian Huxley is generally regarded as the founder of "transhumanism", coining the term in an article written in 1957:

Up till now human life has generally been, as Hobbes described it, nasty, brutish and short; the great majority of human beings (if they have not already died young) have been afflicted with misery we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself - not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity.[11]

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Transhumanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We have exceeded the $14,000 base goal for this Kickstarter and will be producing the book Transhuman, and now we have a few final stretch goals to unlock -- check out below!

Stretch Goal 1: 8 Sample Characters

We will add 8 pages to Transhuman, featuring all new sample characters, each with their own illustration, in the style of those in the Eclipse Phase Core Rulebook and Sunward!

Stretch Goal 2: 8 More!

Transhuman gets 8 more sample characters, for a total of 16!

Stretch Goal 3: Freelancer Raise

All of the freelance contributors to Transhuman -- artists, authors, editors -- are going to get a 15% bonus on their pay for the book!

Stretch Goal 4: Morph Recognition Guide

We'll commission art for all the morphs that we've yet to illustrate, and publish a PDF and Print-on-Demand book, the Morph Recognition Guide, with those illustrations, details about the morphs, game stats, and more!

Stretch Goal 5: Morph Recognition Cards

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Transhuman: The Eclipse Phase Player's Guide by infomorph ...