Steve Fuller - Humanity 2.0 - Part 1/4

What do you mean by Humanity 2.0?

Humanity 2.0 is an understanding of the human condition that no longer takes the "normal human body" as given. On the one hand, we're learning more about our continuity with the rest of nature – in terms of the ecology, genetic make-up, evolutionary history. On this basis, it's easy to conclude that being "human" is overrated. But on the other hand, we're also learning more about how to enhance the capacities that have traditionally marked us off from the rest of nature. Computers come to mind most readily in their capacity to amplify and extend ourselves. Humanity 2.0 is about dealing with this tension.

In what areas have we reached 2.0 already?

Let's put it this way: we've always been heading towards a pretty strong sense of Humanity 2.0. The history of science and technology, especially in the west, has been about remaking the world in our collective "image and likeness", to recall the biblical phrase. This means making the world more accessible and usable by us. Consider the history of agriculture, especially animal and plant breeding. Then move to prosthetic devices such as eyeglasses and telescopes.

More recently, and more mundanely, people are voting with their feet to enter Humanity 2.0 with the time they spend in front of computers, as opposed to having direct contact with physical human beings. In all this, it's not so much that we've been losing our humanity but that it's becoming projected or distributed across things that lack a human body. In any case, Humanity 2.0 is less about the power of new technologies than a state of mind in which we see our lives fulfilled in such things.

Steve's new book 'The Proactionary Imperative' is making headlines: New Scientist - 'A manifesto for playing god with human evolution', The Guardian 'Beyond the precautionary principle'

"Has the time come for a 'proactionary principle', as a foil to the power and problems of precaution? .. The proactionary principle valorises calculated risk-taking as essential to human progress." - The Guardian

Steve Fuller is the Auguste Comte Professor of Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick. He is the author (with Veronika Lipinska) of The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism (Palgrave Macmillan).

Fuller subsequently held assistant and associate professorships at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Virginia Tech and, again, the University of Pittsburgh. In 1994, at the age of 35, he was appointed to the chair in sociology and social policy at the University of Durham, England, from which he moved in 1999 to his current post at the University of Warwick, England. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts in 1995. In July 2007 Fuller was awarded a higher doctorate (D. Litt.) by Warwick for recognition of "published work or papers which demonstrate a high standard of important original work forming a major contribution to a subject". In 2008, Fuller served as President of the Sociology section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In that capacity, he staged a play, 'Lincoln and Darwin—Live for One Night Only!' at the BA's annual 'Festival of Science' in Liverpool. The play was subsequently produced as a podcast in Australia.
Fuller has been a visiting professor in Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden (where he held a Fulbright Professorship in 1995 at Gothenburg University), and the United States (UCLA).
In 2010 Fuller became a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity at the University of North Texas.
In 2011, the University of Warwick appointed Fuller to the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology.
In 2011, Fuller was appointed a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences.
In 2012, Fuller was appointed to an Honorary Professorship at Dalian University of Technology, China.
In 2012, Fuller was made a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Division I (Humanities).

[lijit]

I don't think we're gonna become a new species. I think we'll become more than one but many new things. Different people are probably gonna enhance themselves in different ways and if poor old evolution still has a say, humanity will ultimately go in many different directions.

[scfu]

I would like to see anyone who wants the technology to have access to it. Technology goes through an efficient refinement stage when many people have access (feedback improving quality & economies of scale reducing costs), but technology does not begin its progress in the majorities hands. If moving ahead doesn't mean leaving others behind against their will permanently, then I am in favor.

[mirusvet]

Actually it's a very naïve and narrow minded notion of moving ahead and leaving others behind - egoistic, to be simple. As there is just too much potential in bringing majority of our society up front, not just small overconfident segment. We don't need another "middle-age" era of "relative" nothing. Obviously the method where as many people as possible should have an option to go at it - that's where most of our progress comes from.

[scfu]

If the well off having access to technology X earlier than the poor means that the poor still get access to technology X earlier than they would otherwise, all other things being equal, it is still worth it.

[slomps]

So yes scientific futurism. A simple example statement refuting this direction is this: Driverless Cars and Optimized Search...where are we driving to? and what are we searching for? if those kinds of questions are not asked before going headlong into speculations or research on human and machine hybrids then why go on that journey at all. If history has anything to say it's that the equipment can be endlessly upgraded, but the limbic system always has the last laugh.

[scfu]

I consider myself libertarian and a socialist - but neither to extremes. What is scary is unregulated libertarianism with massive power disparities (where agents use unbounded proaction with no concern for humanity), not as bad but still scary is that everyone's hedonic set point is regulated at a high level with the unfortunate other regulation of not being able to have a high degree of creative expression (over precautionary-precautionary principle).

[depstein]

You might be overgeneralizing. Certainly some on the religious right are interested in the benefits of technology. Of greater danger is that those in power will control who benefits and who doesn't regardless of their political persuasion