Conversations abound about what it means to be human
Call it transhuman, posthuman or digital evolution, technology raises new questions
Thinkstock As technology progresses at an accelerating pace, many theorize we will, or are already, moving toward a posthuman era, where humans become more machine than biological. (handout/Getty Images)
By Stover E. Harger III, Columbian neighborhood news
We have the technology.
Call it transhuman, call it posthuman, call it a digital evolution, whatever the term that is used to describe the theorized move away from human life as purely biological in favor of the technological has monumental implications for humanity as we know it.
Just like how the smartphone has become an extension of ourselves — our "second brain" as the devices are sometimes called — emerging technologies, especially those that directly impact our bodies, offer promise, and depending on how you look at it, peril.
But before humanity reaches its brave new world, we have some big concepts to consider.
"We are in a time where machine intelligence is likely to surpass human intelligence," said Dorothy Deasy, a Vancouver resident and board member of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, a nonprofit founded in 2006 that aims to further dialogue about how to bridge religious ideals and future changes to how we will relate to rapid shifts in technology.
The freelance design researcher, spiritual but not a Mormon herself, became interested with transhumanism in the 1990s, but she really dug into the field in 2009 when working on her master's degree in applied theology at Marylhurst University, in Marylhurst, Ore., 9 miles south of Portland. Her thesis was on the relationship between spirituality and transhumanism.
Read the rest of this article at - http://www.columbian.com/news/2014/sep/07/human-transhuman-technology-questions/
