{"id":71726,"date":"2017-08-05T07:02:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T14:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/the-risk-of-a-transhumanist-future"},"modified":"2017-08-05T07:02:34","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T14:02:34","slug":"the-risk-of-a-transhumanist-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/the-risk-of-a-transhumanist-future","title":{"rendered":"The risk of a transhumanist future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-risk-of-a-transhumanist-future.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But a British PhD candidate has warned of the darker side of a transhumanist future.<\/p>\n<p>Sociologist Alex Thomas of East London University believes that transhumanism will further enforce a societal obsession with \u201cprogress\u201d and \u201cefficiency\u201d at the expense of social justice and environmental sustainability. In an article published this week in <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/super-intelligence-and-eternal-life-transhumanisms-faithful-follow-it-blindly-into-a-future-for-the-elite-78538\">The Conversation<\/a>, Thomas argues that unbridled technological progress, in which technology \u201cbecome more intrusive and integrate seamlessly with the human body\u201d, could lead to a loss of basic societal values such as compassion and a concern for the environment.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Transhumanism and advanced capitalism are two processes which value \u201cprogress\u201d and \u201cefficiency\u201d above everything else. The former as a means to power and the latter as a means to profit. Humans become vessels to serve these values. Transhuman possibilities urgently call for a politics with more clearly delineated and explicit humane values to provide a safer environment in which to foster these profound changes.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thomas interweaves examples ranging from new military technologies to powerful enhancement medications, arguing that, rather than assisting humanity, these technologies could potentially lead to a \u201cmechanisation\u201d of humanity and facilitate a subtle form of authoritarian control.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bioedge.org\/bioethics\/the-risk-of-a-transhumanist-future\/12371\">https:\/\/www.bioedge.org\/bioethics\/the-risk-of-a-transhumanist-future\/12371<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But a British PhD candidate has warned of the darker side of a transhumanist future. Sociologist Alex Thomas of East London University believes that transhumanism will further enforce a societal obsession with \u201cprogress\u201d and \u201cefficiency\u201d at the expense of social justice and environmental sustainability. In an article published this week in The Conversation, Thomas argues [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":267,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9,17,1501],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-military","category-sustainability","category-transhumanism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}