ctrlaltdel: Human 2.0 - The enhanced version

The natural creation of human life takes approximately 38 weeks. It is a natural process, which leads to the birth of a human being. Each human being is born different to others, possessing different skills, characteristics and physical features. They have to learn how to walk, talk and survive in this world. They are not perfect, and in the beginning, they have to rely on others to take care of them. The circle of life is the same for everyone and after being born and growing up, ageing will take its toll on every human being. Senses will start to fail, brain will start to forget the most normal things and the inevitable end will reach each human life. These restrictions have defined the human existence since the beginning of time. But what if that could be changed?

History has proven, that great human inventions can change the world permanently. For example, today it is normal to travel on the other side of the world within hours, when in the past it would take several months. It is even possible to travel to space, and walk on the surface of the Moon. Human generation has improved their knowledge of technology for centuries. So what if this knowledge could next be used to invent ways to overcome the natural restrictions of the human body? Some scientists do indeed believe, that the coming years will introduce an improved human race – human 2.0 – which will allow people to enhance their bodies, skills and senses with the help of technological achievements. Sci-Fi movies about robots and cyborgs could therefore have been accurate predictions about future.

The concept of human 2.0 has been created by a group of trans-humanists. Trans-humanism is a fairly recently emerged school of thought, which believes that the human kind will radically change in the coming years. They believe that the human body will slowly be upgraded into human body version 2.0, by making it possible to overcome human concerns with technological approaches. This means, that failing organs and body parts can be replaced by artificial ones, enabling people to overcome possibly fatal health problems. Furthermore, new biotechnologies will make it possible to cure serious diseases and illnesses, as well as to prevent them on unborn children. Human 2.0 can be seen as the integration of the natural human body and artificial components. And yes, it can also be called a cyborg. Interestingly enough, however, cyborgs have been considered as something from science fiction movies, but some scientists say that they are already reality. [1]

To what extent is the concept of human 2.0 already a part of today’s society? A Cambridge paper from 2009 – “Enhancing humans or a new creation” – introduces three levels of enhancement: trivial, conventional and transhumanist.[2] Trivial enhancement includes things such as vaccinations and contact lenses, which do benefit the human kind, but do not raise any ethical or theological issues. The conventional enhancement includes plastic surgery, prosthetic devices and non-theurapetic, or recreational, drugs. Transhumanist enhancement, however, is clearly different to the previous two because of the emphasis on the technological aspects and the eventual emergence of the ‘posthuman’ .

So, two from these three levels are already well established in the modern society, and have also been made possible through technological achievements. Plastic surgery, for example, enables people to enhance their facial and other physical characteristics. Not too long ago, an option to buy a prettier nose sounded absurd. Today, however, it can even be seen as a normal operation in order to improve self-confidence. Especially in USA, plastic surgeries are incredibly common. A person would hardly be considered a cyborg after having had breast augmentations, but then again, it is part of enhancing a natural human body which can be seen as part of moving towards human 2.0.

Aside from plastic surgery technologies, there are also numerous other technologies which enable the enhancement of human beings. One of the biggest break throughs was the decoding of human DNA in 2000.[3] It opened the door for the development of genetic engineering, which started from simply testing embryos for genetic illnesses. The benefits for that were fantastic, allowing parents to discover any underlying illnesses their unborn child might have. However, the technology has advanced, creating a fear for “designer babies”, which means artificially changing the embryo’s genome and setting physical and cosmetic characteristics based on the parent’s wishes.

Gene therapy advances nearly every day. For example in 2009 it made a significant breakthrough. By using gene therapy, doctors completely cured eight out of 10 children who had been suffering from potentially fatal “bubble boy” disease. [4] It is also known as severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID. Without advanced treatment, the genetic disease normally results in death from infection within the first year of life.The name for the disease comes from the famous story of David Vetter, a little boy who lived in the 70’s . He was laced in a sterilized bubble for 12 years to protect him from any infection. He eventually died in 1984 during a bone narrow transplant surgery. This disease affects approximately 40-100 children in the USA every year.

Furthermore, there is already a huge range of drugs and medication to change the ways people are able to perceive the world and enhance performance. Substances such as caffeine and modafinil positively enhance alertness in humans, steroids and EPO allow athletes to perform better, viagra enhances sexual performance and Ritalin ameliorates concentration. There is also plenty of different drugs to help people overcome depression. In addition, people are also able to get pills to improve dieting and thus change the natural processes in their bodies.These substances are also part of enhancing the natural human body by affecting their mood and physical performance. They are also just the beginning. Scientists are saying, that there are currently plenty of new drugs on trial, which might be able to facilitate things such as trust and loyalty.

But what else can be expected, and what will a human being look like in 30 or 40 years? Nowdays, as mentioned earlier, it is normal to see people wear contact lenses, false teeth, hair implants and silicon breasts. This is only the beginning of human enhancement, and therefore a first step towards human 2.0. People have started realising, that they no longer need to stick with their natural bodies if they are not happy about them. There are still plenty of limitations to the human body,and scientists are working hard in order to find solutions for this. Science is rapidly moving forwards, and it seems as if scientist are soon able to artificially create eveything needed to build a living human being.[5]

Professor Alan Goldstein, a bioengineer, predicts the emergence of “homo technicus”, a human being so smart and enhanced that it can no longer be considered as “homo sapiens”. He explains: ” Homo technicus won't see like us, breed like us, feed like us or need like us.” He also dismisses the idea of humans becoming cyborgs by rather seeing the future human being as “a fusion of biology and technology at the atomic level”.[6]

In the past 40 years, the average human IQ has increased from 100 to 120. This is mostly thanks to work done with computers. Cognitive enhancement is also something the future might bring, allowing people with low IQ to create a higher one. However, humans might not soon be the most intelligent creatures on the planet. According to transhumanists as well as more conservative thinkers, the computer will take over the human brain when it comes to intelligence.[7] Raymon Kurzweil, a transhumanist and a scientist, believes the 21^st century will see a huge technological leap for the human kind. “ In the 21^st century we will not experience 110 years of development as it was in the 20^th century. According to this scale, it will be almost 20-thousand years of development packed into a single century, "he says.

The holy grail of human enhancement is immortality. Overcoming death is something no life form on the planet has been able to do. Well, so far, at least. However, humans today live at least twice as long as they did a hundred years ago. This is not due to human enhancement, but rather improved knowledge over nutrition, health care and sanitation. Avoiding death still seems unimaginable, but anti-ageing products ,on the other hand, have already been a cash cow for the cosmetic industry. Of course, these products do not provide for a longer life but rather for younger looks. Different studies about living longer are carried out constantly, often resulting into various nutritional suggestions. Wether it is a glass of red wine a day or dark chocolate, people definitely try their all in order to enhnce their life expectancy. When it comes to possible technological solutions for immortality, it has been suggested that in the future the human brain could be digitally reproduced, allowing it to “live” independently in a cyber society. [8]

The transfer of human thoughts and memories, therefore, can already happen in the next ten years. In the next twenty years, technologies have probably advanced far enough to allow the artificial creation of human organs. However, this change in human will also have a huge impact on the society. Will human enhancement and longer life expectancy make people happier? Even now, the ageing population is causing a lot of problems for the tax payers. Perhaps the advanced technologies will also take away this problem, but it might also be made worse. The dominant figures in the society will be the representatives of the older generation with great life experiences, but they will ultimately also become the biggest obstacles for the society.

Apart from the changes in the human body, households will also face some of these technological advancements. The future might indeed provide human beings with an intelligent house, with intelligent walls capable of sensing the right environment as well as to improve about changes in the surrounding. Some of the inventions being planned for houses in the future come with huge problem, however. Most of these new innovations take up a lot of energy. Therefore, companies are no longer only trying to come up with even more ways to improve the houses, but are also trying to come up with “greener” ways of doing so. GE, for example, has already partnered with an energy company in order to test out more power efficient technologies.[9] Fulton Innovations, an American company, has even been trying to establish an induction system to replace gas and electricity, and claim it can be done with similar cost if installed properly.

The enhancement of human body, on one hand, is optimistic. First of all, being able to detect and cure genetic illnesses is without a doubt a positive thing. For example it allows parents carrying a gene for a genetic disease to choose the embryos not carrying the specific gene .[10] Furthermore, being able to replace lost body parts and organs is also a great benefit of enhancing a human being. It gives another chance for people, young and old, who have lost a limb in a car accident or have a heart condition. Plastic surgery, although often used for purely cosmetic reasons, can also be used for repairing physical injuries caused by a birth defect or an accident.

However, when it comes to the benefits of further enhancements, namely the enhancements on the transhumanist level introduced earlier, they are slightly more debatable. Being able to replace organs with artificial ones would definitely be of benefit. Also, curing diseases such as Parkinsons or other neural diseases using medication or even some sort of brain implants would be a great technological advancement. Nick Bostrom, the director of Future of Humanity Institute in the Oxford University also points out another benefit the further technological advancements might allow for.[11] According to him, one of the most persuasive comments supporting human enhancement is comparing the best and the worst times of a person’s life. The questions he then proposes is – what if it was possible to have the best time all the time? That would definitely be a benefit of further human enhancement. However, it does still sound rather utopistic .

On the other hand, there is also the negative and even scary side of human enhancement. Genetic engineering will ultimately lead to babies being designed by their parents, detailing their life for them before they have even been born. Aside from the ethical problem, it might also cause unforeseeable health issues for the children. Transhumanist enhancements can also cause unthinkable damage in the society. Inequality will increase due to the fact that the enhancement option would mainly be available for the wealthier population. Furthermore, it can be seen as extremely egocentric, pushing the society from community-oriented towards extreme individualism. It can be argued to give a whole new meaning to “survival of the fittest”.

Is the human race really moving towards a huge technological revolution? Will cyborgs be running the world in the next centuries to come? According to multiple views, the human evolution is at crossroads. [12]Where it is headed can not exactly be determined. Some scientists believe that the human race will split into two. On one side there is the highly developed, educated elite, and on the other the less smart, average human being. Some even believe that natural born humans might become an endareged species if in fact the borders start to blur between man and machine. However, it is impossible to predict anything. The impacts of advanced technologies on the nature, the people and the environment remain undetermined. While some diseases might become curable, new ones will most likely arise which will be uncurable at first. At the moment there are still too many variables to allow for specific predictions on the future.

In conclusion, technology is advancing, fast. Over the last century the world has seen a huge amount of inventions and innovations which have made it possible to change some of the most basic procedures. People no longer need to rely on the nature to do its work, but rather have the possibility to change and prevent things from happening. Basically what technology has done is it has allowed for humans to enhance their lives. But where does it end? It is unlikely a day will ever come when every single problem has been solved and there are no more things that need repairing. So most likely, the human race is heading towards an improved version of itself – human 2.0. Cyborgs might indeed be a part of the future ahead. However, they will probably look as normal as any human being, and not like the science fiction version.