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Biotech

How 'Technoprogressive' Transhumanists Are Enhancing Their Bodies With Technology (cnn.com) 108

Posted by EditorDavid from the domo-arigato dept.
Rob Spence installed a wireless video camera in place of his right eye, reports CNN. And 29-year-old James Young's robotic arm "features a USB port, a screen displaying his Twitter feed and a retractable dock containing a remote-controlled drone..."

"As biotechnology advances, so too may our ideas of what it means to be human." Today, we can alter our bodies in previously unimaginable ways, whether that's implanting microchips, fitting advanced prosthetic limbs or even designing entirely new senses. So-called transhumanists — people who seek to improve their biology by enhancing their bodies with technology — believe that our natural condition inhibits our experience of the world, and that we can transcend our current capabilities through science.

Ideas that are "technoprogressive" to some are controversial to others. But to photographer David Vintiner, they are something else altogether: beautiful. "Beauty is in the engineered products," said Vintiner, who has spent years photographing real-life cyborgs and body-modifiers for his upcoming book, "I Want to Believe — An Exploration of Transhumanism." Made in collaboration with art director and critic Gem Fletcher, the book features a variety of people who identify, to some degree, as "transhuman" — including a man with bionic ears that sense changes in atmospheric pressure, a woman who can "feel" earthquakes taking place around the world and technicians who have developed lab-made organs...

Though the photographer admitted that the transhumanists' claims can seem outlandish at first, he soon saw the appeal of technological self-enhancement. "If given the chance, how would you design your own body and what would you want it to say about you?" he asked.
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How 'Technoprogressive' Transhumanists Are Enhancing Their Bodies With Technology More

How 'Technoprogressive' Transhumanists Are Enhancing Their Bodies With Technology

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  • Makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @03:10AM (#60130298)

    enhancing their bodies

    a screen displaying his Twitter feed

    These two are mutually exclusive.

    • Can't wait for my arm to overheat because of ads.
      • Wow. That is a paralyzing thought. To have the heart be paid for by ads, that is something only the future would fear for us.
        • To have the heart be paid for by ads, that is something only the future would fear for us.

          There was a movie called In Time [imdb.com] in which people have been genetically altered to stop aging at 25. In your forearm there is a digital clock which starts counting down from that moment. When it reaches zero, you die.

          You have to work to earn more time. The more you work, the longer you live. However, to pay for things you have to use time. Some, what we could consider billionaires, have been able to amass s
          • Life clocks are a lie! Carousel is a lie! THERE IS NO RENEWAL!

          • > The more you work, the longer you live.

            Actually, a careful watch of the movie will show you that:

                  * The more you work, the more work is devalued
                  * The more you learn to game and manipulate the system, the longer you live (aka, the "Richer" you become)

            Exactly as it is under ALL economic systems of today AND exactly how it would be under UBI.

            • True. Yours is a better description of the movie. The scene where Olivia Wilde catches the bus and is told the amount of time needed had gone up is what you are referring to. The same when Timberlake gets paid and he questions the amount.

              As a side note, and something I have told people, I find it amusing that throughout the entire movie, Amanda Seyfried is wearing heels despite them stopping at Timberlake's apartment where they raided Olivia's closet. When the two are trying to escape, she's running in h

    • To attach a Borg quality adaptation would definitely cause trauma to tissue. That is quite separate of nerd.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Not necessarily, there are bio-compatible materials that are being used in things like prosthetics and implants already. Animal tests of Neuralink's BCI (brain/computer interface) show minimal negative effects on tissue even though it's implanting over a thousand connections. It's a brave new world coming, I only regret that I won't be around long enough to see more than just the very beginning.

    • I was going to come in here posting about my vision of the transhumanist dystopia, but it looks like this dude is already a step ahead of me.

      If there's one thing to be learned from the past 15 years, it's that the big, networked, "stay socially connected"-type technologies that are being pushed are having some very bad effects on society... and only part of that has to do with it being centrally controlled. Part of it is inherent. We've streamlined it to the level that it's on your body 24 hours now. Puttin

  • Perhaps they are 'enhancing' their bodies with a Corona muzzle and a tinfoil hat?

  • Technoprogressive Transhumanists (Score:5, Funny)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @03:16AM (#60130316)

    That's a strange way to spell "Pretentious Wankers"

    • I use a more streamlined term...Kardashian.

    • You're correct.

      I am "enhanced" myself (I have 4 RFID and NFC transponders inside of me), and we in the community call ourselves "grinders". Although some people don't much like the resemblance with the Grindr community and prefer to call themselves cyborg - which I find pretty stupid for people who have simple implants such as me, considering how this is really nowhere near being a cyborg.

  • Current technology isn't nearly advanced enough (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @03:42AM (#60130352) Homepage

    Sure, you can plug in something that works for a while, crudely and with serious infection and/or rejection issues, but its equivalent to plugging a coal fired steam boiler into a smartphone to make it go faster. Biology is far more sophisticated than even our most advanced tech right now and that will be the case for a long time yet.

    Yes there are examples such as pacemakers or hearing aids but they're mostly external to the body and still have issues long term.

    • Re: Current technology isn't nearly advanced enoug (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @04:39AM (#60130438)

      I guess you haven't seen the video of the monkey feeding himself with the robotic arm via electrodes stuck randomly into his brain either. The brain is not a rigid structure. It is quite good at adapting itself to the quirks of any natural or artificial senses and actuators.

      The article and what it presents, is still methaphorical cancer though, as I said.

    • If you are getting a pacemaker installed you might have long term issues, but if you don't you will have (by definition) short term ones. Are all of your affairs currently in order?

    • You haven't been paying attention to advances in the fields of prosthetics then. The flood of disabled vets created in the fiascos of Iraq and Afghanistan have totally energized the entire industry. There are literally dozens of biocompatible materials that have been discovered and are in use already, more are being investigated. Nerve/electronics interfaces are no longer new, and they're being used to aid paraplegics to learn to walk again even without functional spinal cord connections. The newest cochlear implants can be reprogrammed to allow hearing that humans have never before experienced. Neuralink expects to test its brain/computer interface in a human sometime this year or next, which is **very** exciting.

      Are current prosthetics better than the arm or leg one was born with? Not yet, but work is progressing incredibly rapidly. Digital cameras are thousands of times better than human vision though, flash memory is faster and more accurate than human memory, wired communications are orders of magnitude faster than nerves and optical connections are even faster.

      It's an exciting time to be alive.

  • Hype (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01, 2020 @03:43AM (#60130354)

    The article tries to suggest that these "new senses" are integrated with the complex sense processing neuron structure of the brain. They are not. More of a parlor trick than something resembling "transcendence". My cell phone vibrates in my pocket and I feel it against my leg. Am I a "transhuman" too?

    • Re: Hype (Score:4, Informative)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @04:36AM (#60130426)

      To be fair, brain-computwr interfaces are a thing though. I've seen people stick electrodes into a monkey's brain and him just casually learning to use the new arm attached to it to feed himself!

      It's only that humans still pussy out on doing to themselves. ;)

      But frankly ⦠some opiates for the skull, a dremel to cut a hole into it, and a few chemically neutral flexible needles, going from some brain region to some Adruino, controlling e.g. a car, and with a bit of exercise, and something to prevent the body from forming scar tissue and reject the needes, you're in business to become a car cyborg right fucking *today*!

      It's not science fiction. It's just scary as fuck to poke your own brain! :)

      • Mason, Mason, Mason...

        https://youtu.be/BsOSvpBuVHk [youtu.be]

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's not fear, it's that the benefits just aren't worth it the risk. Unless you have some disability that it can compensate for there isn't much it can do to enhance a fairly healthy human.

        Also a lot of the stuff people really want isn't possible with probes or even a direct function of the brain, e.g. the ability to download knowledge or weight control.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          "a lot of the stuff people really want isn't possible yet with..."

          FTFY

        • Well, as soon as the head can be closed up cleanly,and the electrodes arenâ(TM)s poking inside the brain on inconvenient moves or being rejected without meds ... hell yeah it is worth it and I'd go for it ASAP. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Check out Neuralink (yeah, they're an Elon Musk company). Their system implants over a thousand biocompatible connections with minimal damage to the brain, the animal tests are very promising and they plan human tests either this year or next.

    • Well, you "sense" a notification, so, yes.

    • Re: Hype (Score:5, Interesting)

      by yassa2020 ( 6703044 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @05:07AM (#60130478)
      I didn't read the article but I know from reading science on the subject that indeed many if not most sensory augments eventually become part of your reality perception. For example a dude with a magnetic filament implant reportedly sees colored lights in the direction of magnetic fields. Our brains are quite plastic and it probably helps that what we see is a synthesis that is only partly made up of sensory input, our brains already do a lot of virtual reconstruction as it is.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      depends on how far you want to go with the definition. in essence, a human wearing prescription glasses or with an artificial joint is already trans-human, it's just a matter of sophistication of the technology.

      ofc, some of these adaptations might be more groundbreaking than others, interfacing with the brain is barely in its infancy but is already a thing.

      one question this inevitably raises is how it challenges our notion of "being human". that notion is today generally just a philosophical/religious fabri

  • Wake me when... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @03:43AM (#60130356) Journal

    Look, I get gizmos and gadgets. Still this makes me queasy.

    I'll be on board when I can get a new right eye that is at least as good as my left one. I'll get a new colon when that does all my old one does minus the ulcerative colitis.

    I am all about enhancing what my body can do but having a USB port in my arm just doesn't sound like anything I have been missing in my life. Like at all.

  • I knew this was the bad kind ... the social cancerous kind ... the kind that those people hate that always talk about "those damn progressives like it was a bad thing ... as soon as it said "Twitter".

    I used to not get such people. How could progress ever be bad?

    But now I get it: Because it is not progress! Not my definition of progress anyway. Which I consider the only right one. Progress as in, making our lives better, *period*!

    It is not progress. It is sterring off into some other insane and cancerous dir

  • Is it an improvement? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @04:30AM (#60130410)

    The problem I have with the whole deal isn't as much that I think the guy with a camera for an eye is creepy, the reason I don't want one is that my right eye is functioning (mostly) and that I highly doubt that any technological replacement I could get is superior to my current eye. While having an eye that can see more wavelengths at higher resolution with built-in zoom function sounds great on paper, unless it's better than what I have right now, and less prone to error (here's that bit that I really doubt, by the way, our bodies are nothing if not superior in longevity and self-repair capability to anything human has ever designed, even without planned obsolescence), why the hell would I throw away a functioning limb to replace it with an inferior substutute?

    If people have missing or damaged limbs or senses, by all means do what you can to "rebuild" them. But tossing a working limb to replace it with something artificial that is on most accounts inferior? What kind of stupid do you have to be to do that?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I'm sure most know what they are sacrificing or risking. Some people are obsessed with certain goals such that they will accept such risk. Note that lot of people get along fine in life with just one eye and one arm. It's not the end of the world if your replacement part fails to deliver.

      However, some may end up risking their lives for experiments. But how is that different than being a test pilot or astronaut: risk to explore.

      Or soldier even...

  • Compulsory comment. (Score:4, Funny)

    by AnonCowardSince1997 ( 6258904 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @05:05AM (#60130474)

    ‘I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. Ever since I was a boy I dreamed of soaring over the oilfields dropping hot sticky loads on disgusting foreigners. People say to me that a person being a helicopter is Impossible and I'm fucking retarded but I don't care, I'm beautiful. I'm having a plastic surgeon install rotary blades, 30 mm cannons and AMG-114 Hellfire missiles on my body. From now on I want you guys to call me "Apache" and respect my right to kill from above and kill needlessly. If you can't accept me you're a heliphobe and need to check your vehicle privilege. Thank you for being so understanding.’

    meme [knowyourmeme.com]

    • I accept you. I identify as a Stinger. I find your nozzles to be highly attractive. I can't help it, it's just how I was designed. I hope you understand.

  • I'm going to guess 'derp' and 'slurm'.

  • "29-year-old James Young's robotic arm "features a USB port, "

    Wow! He can charge his vape pen with that!!

  • I assume many of these "technoprogressives" did not choose to give up an eye or a limb to be this way. Finding a new identity and purpose is often a part of the recovery after such an injury. The article fails to pick up on any trauma recovery, but labels people and classifies them into a trend. It gives a rather cold and distant view on people who may be looking for a way to accept themselves and to be accepted.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Much of the progress in the field was inadvertently provided by conservatives with their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands of people have artificial limbs integrating technologies that didn't even exist when they lost their original limb, and currently the fastest runner in the world has prosthetic lower legs.

      • Much of the progress in the field was inadvertently provided by conservatives with their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands of people have artificial limbs.

        If I recall correctly Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq invasion too.

        Joe Biden championed the Iraq war. Will that come back to haunt him now? [theguardian.com]

        ‘Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war. Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influe

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          If I recall correctly Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq invasion too.

          Like I said, conservatives. Oh, I get it, you're confusing the Democratic Party leadership with its label rather than its deeds. I suppose that's easy to do if you don't pay attention to politics for 30 years or so.

  • Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

    Anything resembling a "transhuman" won't be possible without post-singularity technologies. (In before "no true transhuman" fallacy.)

  • As for the guy with a camera eye, that sounds boring.
    I'm working on a bluetooth controlled eye replacement that cannot see, but does fire a 10 watt laser for a short while.

  • So...nothing a smart phone can't already do, with all the thrill of unnecessary surgery and the eventual defeat of obsolete computer hardware. Have fun getting your prosthetics hacked!

  • The only enhancements I want are eyes and ears that function as well as they did 50 years ago, along with the fast healing and tight skin and boundless energy I had as a youth. I don't want to be 'beyond human', I just want to be a 'better human' - one that lasts longer and more comfortably. I want torn ligaments and tendons and cartilage healed, and grinding pre-arthritic joints renewed. I want to enjoy simultaneously the physical benefits of youth, and the emotional, psychological, and intellectual benefi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      You have no imagination. I want the digestive system of a beagle, the teeth of a pig (I watched one eat a chunk of limestone), the endurance of a hound, the hearing of an owl, and the vision of a spider monkey. (The prehensile tail would be cool too, but optional.)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by urusan ( 1755332 )

      From what you've said, you have more in common with the transhumanists than you seem to think.

      Liz Parrish, photographed in the article, wants exactly the same things you want and underwent potentially dangerous self-experimentation to try to prove that it works. Things seem to be working out for her thus far, and if successful it could be the start of therapies that deliver exactly what you want. You should support the people who are willing to put their necks on the line so the rest of us can potentially b

  • All the comments I've read so far has been incredibly negative and judgemental.

    I can't believe it. /. has existed for over 23 years and has featured all kinds of worthy stuff that has always been News for nerds; Stuff that matters.

    Whatever the transhumans are doing today is surely paving the way for real progress in the future.

    What is progress?

    Simple. It's people willing to take the risks other people won't so that it benefits the whole human race.

    And here you are mocking and laughing at the people that act

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      This isn't the only thread populated by Luddites recently. There was one about Boston Robotics' Spot being used to aid COVID19 patient processing and another a few days later on which were all uniformly negative about something actual techies should find very cool. Not sure what's going on.

  • "From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine. Your kind cling to your flesh as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call a temple will wither and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved. For the Machine is Immortal."
    -- Magos Dominus Faustinius

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