We Are Transhuman – H+ Magazine

By: Extropia DaSilva

One question that I have seen repeatedly asked is: When did the transhuman era begin; indeed, has it begun or is it an event that is yet to occur?

One can find arguments both for and against it being an event we are in the midst of. Those who argue in favour of the transhuman era being well underway argue that we are already cyborg: We compensate for short-sightedness with eyeglasses; we wear clothes to protect our body from the elements, and we depend greatly on computing and communications devices to organise our daily lives. Those who argue against point out that, while we are clearly dependent on technology, by and large it serves only to compensate for disabilities. Glasses correct short-sightedness, for example, but do not augment vision to human+ levels. And we merely carry our smart phones around with us, rather than have them implanted. We are not really cyborgs.

So what side of this argument do I side with? I think it pretty obvious that we are in the midst of the transhuman era. We are, now, clearly in a transitional period between homo-sapiens sapiens and the post-human. It is not my purpose to pinpoint when, exactly, the transhuman era began. Perhaps it is impossible to pinpoint the moment when our relationship with technology was such that we had become transhuman. The computer age? The Industrial Age? The Stone Age? I would not be surprised if arguments could be made favouring any one as the age in which our relationship with technology was intimate enough to warrant favouring it as the beginning of the transhuman era. What I want to show is that, it began at some hard-to-define period in the past and we are now well into that transitional period between natural humans and whatever technological being is to follow.

Consider the range of our senses and physical abilities as natural humans*:

Visible light: 4 to 7 times 10^-5 meters.

Hearing: 10 to 20,000 Hz

Chemosenses: 5 tastes, 1000 smells

Touch: 3,000nm

Heat sensing 200 to 400K

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We Are Transhuman - H+ Magazine