Transhumanist Dreams And Dystopian Nightmares

Author : Maxwell J. Mehlman
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421407272
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares written by Maxwell J. Mehlman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What will happen when technology allows us to direct our own evolution? Transhumanists advocate for the development and distribution of technologies that will enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities, even eliminate aging. What if the dystopian futures and transhumanist utopias found in the pages of science journals, Margaret Atwood novels, films like Gattaca, and television shows like Dark Angel are realized? What kind of world would humans have created? Maxwell J. Mehlman considers the promises and perils of using genetic engineering in an effort to direct the future course of human evolution. He addresses scientific and ethical issues without choosing sides in the dispute between transhumanists and their challengers. However, Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares reveals that radical forms of genetic engineering could become a reality much sooner than many people think, and that we need to encourage risk-management efforts. Whether scientists are dubious or optimistic about the prospects for directed evolution, they tend to agree on two things. First, however long it takes to perfect the necessary technology, it is inevitable that humans will attempt to control their evolutionary future, and second, in the process of learning how to direct evolution, we are bound to make mistakes. Our responsibility is to learn how to balance innovation with caution.

Author : Maxwell J. Mehlman
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421406691
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares written by Maxwell J. Mehlman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-08-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transhumanists advocate for the development and distribution of technologies that will enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities, even eliminate aging. What if the dystopian futures and transhumanist utopias found in the pages of science journals, Margaret Atwood novels, films like Gattaca, and television shows like Dark Angel are realized? What kind of world would humans have created? Maxwell J. Mehlman considers the promises and perils of using genetic engineering in an effort to direct the future course of human evolution. He addresses scientific and ethical issues without choosing sides in the dispute between transhumanists and their challengers. However, Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares reveals that radical forms of genetic engineering could become a reality much sooner than many people think, and that we need to encourage risk-management efforts. Whether scientists are dubious or optimistic about the prospects for directed evolution, they tend to agree on two things. First, however long it takes to perfect the necessary technology, it is inevitable that humans will attempt to control their evolutionary future, and second, in the process of learning how to direct evolution, we are bound to make mistakes. Our responsibility is to learn how to balance innovation with caution.

Author : Philip Butler
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350081949
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Black Transhuman Liberation Theology written by Philip Butler and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mediating Black religious studies, spirituality studies, and liberation theology, Philip Butler explores what might happen if Black people in the United States merged technology and spirituality in their fight towards materializing liberating realities. The discussions shaping what it means for humans to exist with technology and as part of technology are already underway: transhumanism suggests that any use of technology to augment intellectual, psychological, or physical capability makes one transhuman. In an attempt to encourage Black people in the United States to become technological progenitors as a spiritual act, Butler asks whether anyone has ever been 'just' human? Butler then explores the implications of this question and its link to viewing the body as technology. Re-imagining incarnation as a relationship between vitality, biochemistry, and genetics, the book also takes a critical scientific approach to understanding the biological embodiment of Black spiritual practices. It shows how current and emerging technologies might align with the generative biological states of Black spiritualities in order to concretely disrupt and dismantle oppressive societal structures.

Author : Calvin Mercer
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 632 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion and Transhumanism written by Calvin Mercer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should technology be used to improve human faculties such as cognition and longevity? This thought-provoking dialogue between "transhumanism" and religion examines enhancement technologies that could radically alter the human species. "Transhumanism" or "human enhancement" is an intellectual and cultural movement that advocates the use of emerging technologies to change human traits. Although they may sound like science fiction, the possibilities suggested by transhumanism are very real, and the questions they raise have no easy answers. If these enhancements—especially major ones like the indefinite extension of healthy human life—become widely available, they would arguably have a more radical impact on humankind than any other development in history. This book comprises essays that explore transhumanism and the issues that surround it, addressing numerous fascinating questions posed by scholars of religion from various traditions. How will "immortality" or extreme longevity change our religious beliefs and practices? How might pharmaceuticals enhance spiritual experiences? Will "post-human" technologies be available to all persons, or will a superior "post-human race" arise to dominate the human species? The discussions are as intriguing as the future they suggest.

Author : Steve Donaldson
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319903233
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Perspectives on Transhumanism and the Church written by Steve Donaldson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-08-02 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians have always been concerned with enhancement—now they are faced with significant questions about how technology can help or harm genuine spiritual transformation. What makes traditional and technological enhancement different from each other? Are there theological insights and spiritual practices that can help Christians face the challenge of living in a technological world without being dangerously conformed to its values? This book calls on Christians to understand and engage the deep issues facing the church in a technological, transhumanist future.

Author : John S. Hammett
Publisher : B&H Publishing Group
ISBN 13 : 1087730163
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Humanity written by John S. Hammett and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Hammett’s and Katie McCoy’s Humanity is built on four assumptions: that humans are creatures, that they can only be understood in light of the intentions of their Creator, that the Creator’s intentions are revealed in the pages of Scripture, and that humans enjoy a truly and fully human life only when they live in accordance with their created nature. Thus, this work seeks to offer a biblical perspective on human nature as designed by God.

Author : Calum MacKellar
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350216569
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ethics of Generating Posthumans written by Calum MacKellar and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-01-27 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should transhuman and posthuman persons ever be brought into existence? And if so, could they be generated in a good and loving way? This study explores how society may respond to the actual generation of new kinds of persons from ethical, philosophical, and theological perspectives. Contributors to this volume address a number of essential questions, including the ethical ramifications of generating new life, the relationships that generators may have with their creations, and how these creations may consider their generation. This collection's interdisciplinary approach traverses the philosophical writings of Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, alongside theological considerations from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. It invites academics, faith leaders, policy makers, and stakeholders to think through the ethical gamut of generating posthuman and transhuman persons.

Author : Carmen Laguarta-Bueno
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000655288
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representing (Post)Human Enhancement Technologies in Twenty-First Century US Fiction written by Carmen Laguarta-Bueno and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-07 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work studies three twenty-first century novels by Richard Powers, Dave Eggers and Don DeLillo as representative of a new trend of US fiction concerned with the topic of the technological augmentation of the human condition. The different chapters provide, from the double perspective of the optimistic transhumanist philosophy and the more balanced approach of critical posthumanism, an overview of the narrative strategies used by the writers to explore the possibilities that biotechnology, digital technologies and cryonics open up to transcend our human limitations, while also warning their readers of their most nefarious consequences. Ultimately, the book puts forward the claim that even if the writers approach the subject from a variety of perspectives and using different narrative styles and techniques, they all share a critical posthumanist fear that an unrestrained and unquestioned use of technology for enhancement purposes may bring about disembodiment and dehumanization.

Author : Matthew E. Gladden
Publisher : Defragmenter Media
ISBN 13 : 1944373063
Total Pages : 442 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Posthuman Management written by Matthew E. Gladden and published by Defragmenter Media. This book was released on 2016-08-07 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the best practices for leading a workforce in which human employees have merged cognitively and physically with electronic information systems and work alongside social robots, artificial life-forms, and self-aware networks that are ‘colleagues’ rather than simply ‘tools’? How does one manage organizational structures and activities that span actual and virtual worlds? How are the forces of technological posthumanization transforming the theory and practice of management? This volume explores the reality that an organization’s workers, managers, customers, and other stakeholders increasingly comprise a complex network of human agents, artificial agents, and hybrid human-synthetic entities. The first part of the book develops the theoretical foundations of an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ and presents frameworks for understanding and managing the evolving workplace relationship between human and synthetic beings. Other chapters investigate topics such as the likelihood that social robots might utilize charismatic authority to lead human workers; potential roles of AIs as managers of cross-cultural virtual teams; the ethics and legality of entrusting organizational decision-making to spatially diffuse robots that have no discernible physical form; quantitative approaches to comparing managerial capabilities of human and artificial agents; the creation of artificial life-forms that function as autonomous enterprises competing against human businesses; neural implants as gateways that allow human users to participate in new forms of organizational life; and the implications of advanced neuroprosthetics for information security and business model design. As the first comprehensive application of posthumanist methodologies to management, this volume will interest management scholars and management practitioners who must understand and guide the forces of technologization that are rapidly reshaping organizations’ form, dynamics, and societal roles.

Author : Daniel Deudney
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190903368
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dark Skies written by Daniel Deudney and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Space is again in the headlines. E-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are planning to colonize Mars. President Trump wants a "Space Force" to achieve "space dominance" with expensive high-tech weapons. The space and nuclear arms control regimes are threadbare and disintegrating. Would-be asteroid collision diverters, space solar energy collectors, asteroid miners, and space geo-engineers insistently promote their Earth-changing mega-projects. Given our many looming planetary catastrophes (from extreme climate change to runaway artificial superintelligence), looking beyond the earth for solutions might seem like a sound strategy for humanity. And indeed, bolstered by a global network of fervent space advocates-and seemingly rendered plausible, even inevitable, by oceans of science fiction and the wizardly of modern cinema-space beckons as a fully hopeful path for human survival and flourishing, a positive future in increasingly dark times. But despite even basic questions of feasibility, will these many space ventures really have desirable effects, as their advocates insist? In the first book to critically assess the major consequences of space activities from their origins in the 1940s to the present and beyond, Daniel Deudney argues in Dark Skies that the major result of the "Space Age" has been to increase the likelihood of global nuclear war, a fact conveniently obscured by the failure of recognize that nuclear-armed ballistic missiles are inherently space weapons. The most important practical finding of Space Age science, also rarely emphasized, is the discovery that we live on Oasis Earth, tiny and fragile, and teeming with astounding life, but surrounded by an utterly desolate and inhospitable wilderness stretching at least many trillions of miles in all directions. As he stresses, our focus must be on Earth and nowhere else. Looking to the future, Deudney provides compelling reasons why space colonization will produce new threats to human survival and not alleviate the existing ones. That is why, he argues, we should fully relinquish the quest. Mind-bending and profound, Dark Skies challenges virtually all received wisdom about the final frontier.