Last Friday’s IEET seminar on Biopolitics and Popular Culture has come and gone. What were the take-aways?
Almost everyone there seemed to believe that the future will either be “Transhuman,” Transhuman-like, or Transhuman-lite. But the process of getting there—which people say is “half the fun”—is anything but clear.
There seemed to be at least two identifiable groups at the conference. Members of the first group identify as “Transhumanists” and embrace a comprehensive agenda for radical human change. (They were probably the majority.) Then there were those who are either agnostic on the topic (particularly regarding the often-predicted Singularity) or are reluctant to identify with the term itself. There was certainly consensus, however, that radical physical and cognitive enhancement is coming—and that we’re not socially or culturally ready for it yet.
Mike Treder provided a comprehensive summary of the seminar, which—as he observes—“totally rocked.” Overall, the day’s sessions reinforced my own belief that the human-enhancement idea has been embedded (for good or evil) in the mass psyche through ancient and modern tropes. But tropes, schmopes—the general public has no idea how radical the coming changes will be. Conversely, some in the Transhumanist community may not fully grasp how strong the backlash to these ideas could become. The radical enhancement concept will need some serious selling before it’s accepted by the population at large (who can often be identified by their habit of screaming and pointing at the sky when the saucers first appear.)
Objects in the rear-view mirror—those artifacts of human history that may seem archaic to some in the Transhumanist community—are likely to be sources of substantial public resistance. The artifacts in question include religion, patriotism, attachment to old family structures, and the other quotidian pleasures of many people’s lives. Confronting those artifacts with derision will not be an effective strategy for selling the enhancement vision. Even relatively simple “enhancements” like birth control and other reproductive technologies have been met with a firestorm of religiously-based resistance. In fact, this country has actually moved backwards from the widespread acceptance these techniques enjoyed had in the 1970s.
That fact was brought home for me when I was researching Spider-Man as an example of what I call “zero-sum” enhancement characters from religion, legend, and popular culture. (“Zero-sum” figures are those who receive special talents or gifts, but pay an equivalent price in other parts of their lives to preserve the balance of nature. Think Icarus, Iron Man, or Dorian Gray.) I learned that Marvel Comics released a pamphlet for Planned Parenthood in the 70s in which Spider-Man explains why teenagers should not get pregnant and explaining the services available to them. If Marvel did that today they’d face a nationwide boycott—so much so that there’s little chance they would even try.
As for the conference itself, I thoroughly enjoyed all the presentations. Despite my ADD (which I consider a cognitive upgrade—it allows me to multitask in our digital environment), I was able to give it my full attention for the entire day. Trust me: That never happens! (It helped that I was already an avid follower of many contributors.)
I’m reluctant to name any individual presenters, since I enjoyed them all so much, but a special shout-out goes to Jess Nevins for best title: “Those Who Cannot Remember Doc Savage Are Doomed to Repeat Him.” Of those who were best-known, David Brin—yes, the David Brin—brought his patented brand of contrariness to the session. And Jamais Cascio was in the enviable position of concluding the seminar, which allowed him to weave thoughts from the entire day’s session into his presentation. (Maybe it’s that kind of foresight—get that closing spot!—that accounts for his success. Remember: In the future we will all be Number 72 in Foreign Policy’s list of the year’s Top 100 Thinkers.)
The session was streamed on TechZulu and I’m told video will be available in the next few weeks. (The next few weeks? You call that a Singularity??) It will be “TV worth watching” for anyone interested in the human future. We don’t know yet exactly what that future will be, and I remain skeptical about overly-certain forecasters of any persuasion. What we do know is that we’ll get there one step at a time. A series of small changes will eventually add up to a profound transformation—one whose magnitude we may only recognize in retrospect.
“Life can only be understood backwards,” said Kierkegaard, “but it has to be lived forwards.” The coming human transformation may someday be described in much the same way. If the future really is Transhuman, it will be that way in part because planners have considered and addressed the “biopolitics of popular culture.”
Richard Eskow, an Affiliate Scholar of the IEET and Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future, is CEO of Health Knowledge Systems (HKS) in Los Angeles.