Trans-humanism: Exactly who or “what” are we? Are we nothing more than complicated machines?

Profound changes are in the offing. We are being forced to reconsider exactly who or “what” we are!

Are we nothing more than complicated machines?
Can we be replicated and therefore replaced?
Are we in danger of becoming subjugated by robots and other superlative machines?
Are we already slaves to our own inventiveness?

Michael Guillen, author of The End of Life as We Know It: Ominous News from the Frontiers of Science, says he foresees transhuman augmentations falling into three broad categories:

Unusable
Wearable
Implantable.

Guillen says we are in the early years of what’s being called “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

The First Revolution – powered by steam
The Second Revolution – powered by electricity
The Third Revolution – powered by computers.
The Fourth Revolution – powered by efforts to create artificial intelligence and artificial life. Its apparent ultimate goal being “the perfect integration of human and machine” or “Transhumanism.”

Forbes contributor Bernard Mark says, “In this fourth revolution, we are facing a range of new technologies that combine the physical, digital, and biological worlds. These new technologies will impact all disciplines, economies, and industries, and even challenge our ideas about what it means to be human.”

“By the 2030s,” predicts Ray Kurzweil, the author of The Singularity Is Near, and cofounder of Northern California’s Singularity University, “We will connect our neocortex, the part of our brain where we do our thinking, to the cloud.”

En route to the fabled singularity, are we likely to become transhuman creatures, or cyborgs, humans whose natural born abilities have been augmented by superhuman intelligence and machines?

According to Matthew John Doeden in Can You Survive an Artificial Intelligence Uprising, no one knows for sure. Maybe it’s all just fantasy or maybe, just maybe, we are busy building our future conquerors.

“The changes are so profound that from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril.” Klaus Schwarb

So, are we building our future conquerors? Are you ready to connect your neocortex to the cloud? Or is it all just fantasy? As always, you be the judge of that!