The Posthuman Future

Everything we’re able to do today to enhance humans – from genetic engineering to artificial limbs – simply improves on the base model we were born with. But for some people, that doesn’t go far enough. They think we shouldn’t be stuck with the factory-installed settings in our DNA. And they’re not satisfied with a lifespan that tops out at 100 years.
Natasha Vita-More is an artist who imagines a future in which humans are freed from the constructs dictated by nature – a transhumanist. “It seems rather ridiculous that we back up our computers but as far as our minds are concerned, we just leave it up to whatever happens,” she says.
Among her early transhumanist-themed artworks is Primo Posthuman, a prototype human incorporating imagined – but potentially feasible – technological enhancement. The high concept computer-generated image looks a little like the instruction manual to The Bionic Woman, with replaceable genes, enhanced intelligence, and a lifespan listed as “ageless.” A label that points to the kneecap says, “Solar protected skin with tone-texture changeability.”
But not everyone is on board. William Hurlbut is a medical doctor who once sat on the President’s Council on Bioethics and a prominent skeptic of bio-engineered enhancement. “If we go and intervene in these things in a frivolous sort of way,” Hurlbut argues, “then we could very easily disrupt the setting in which human life has its greatest meaning.”
“We should seek the moral and spiritual meaning of our lives in the midst of our suffering,” Hulrbut adds, rather than “try to escape them through biotechnology.”
  
Slideshow: Transhumanist Art