Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
persist in the failed project called humanity, let's find something new and
improved. In fact, let's junk this worn-out theme, the human, altogether
and come up with a better trope. Much of contemporary social theory
has this message as an explicit subtext. Such sentiments dovetail nicely
with visions like that of cyberneticist Kevin Warwick, a British scientist
who now implants computer chips in his own body as a way to augment
his nervous system and who often proclaims his fervent desire to become
a cyborg. “I was born human,” he wrote in
Wired
. “But this was an
accident of fate—a condition merely of time and place. I believe it is
something we have the power to change.”
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For anyone who wanted to argue that there exist fundamental bound-
aries that should not be crossed in biotechnology, robotics, and other
engineering projects, the response of cyborg social theorists is perfectly
clear: Face it, folks, the relevant boundaries have already been breached.
Thousands of ingenious boundary crossings are already evident in the
creation of hybrids of every conceivable description. Mixes of things for-
merly given in nature along with new things from laboratories, design
shops, and marketing agencies have already filled our world. How can
anyone suggest this should not continue as it already has for some time
now? At the very least, no one can claim any longer that such boundary
crossings and their progeny are unprecedented.
As should be clear from the tone of my observations so far, I find
the themes and projects of posthumanism a bizarre way of imagining
the choices we face. Within three prominent domains of contempo-
rary posthumanism—the natural sciences, social movements, and
social theory—one finds levels of self-indulgence and megalomania that
are simply off the charts. The greatest puzzle about this fin de siècle
fad is how tawdry notions could have attracted such a large audience
at all.
Fortunately, there is an appealing alternative to today's frenzy about
cyborgs, hybrids, transhumans, extropians, and the like—rethinking
what it means to be human in the first place. Far from being an exhausted
concept or failed project, being human is a question whose possibilities
are very much open to intellectual inquiry and practical realization. The
relevant category, in my view, is perhaps less that of “human nature”
than of the “human condition.” To face this condition squarely involves,
for example, the recognition of mortality as a basic fact of human
