Recherche – Detailansicht

Ausgabe:

März/2021

Spalte:

123-146

Kategorie:

Philosophie, Religionsphilosophie

Autor/Hrsg.:

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

Titel/Untertitel:

The Paradoxes of Transhumanism

Technological Spirituality or Techno-Idolatry?

I Transhumanist Futurism: A Brief Overview



Transhumanism is a broadly defined and loosely organized intellectual and cultural movement that envisions the transformation of the human condition by means of science and technology.1 With no codified belief or agreed upon agenda, transhumanism is a cluster of views based on the assumption that human beings are in the state of transition, that change is desirable, and that it will happen through technoscientific means. Transhumanism has different flavors including anarchist, libertarian, democratic, hedonistic, apocalyptic and eschatological, but all of them express profound techno-optimism. Numerically, transhumanism is still a very small movement – the number of self-declared transhumanists world-wide is but several thousand strong – but the cultural influence of transhumanism is immense. The main themes of transhumanism – human enhancement, brain-computer interface and prosthetics, artificial intelligence, anti-aging and radical life extension, cyber immortality, and space colonization – have inspired many domains of contemporary culture, including film, media, videogames, horr or genre, performance art, and literature. Appealing to a very diverse group of people (e. g., scientists, computer experts, space explorers, engineers and technology enthusiasts, gamers, tech entrepreneurs, science fiction writers and fans, strategists, and futurists), transhumanism exerts enormous impact on the way we think about technology and the way we imagine the future of the human species.

The intellectual roots of transhumanism can be traced to the Renaissance (especially to Francis Bacon) and to the Enlightenment ideology of progress,2 but it was only in 1957 that Julian Huxley, the older brother of Aldous Huxley, coined the term ›transhumanism.‹ For Huxley, transhumanism was another word for what he called »evolutionary humanism,« namely, the deliberate effort by humankind »to transcend itself – not just sporadically […] but in its entirety, as humanity. […] Man remaining man, but transcending him-self, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.«3 Huxley considered transhumanism a »key concept: of an entirely new intellectual framework,« »a new ideology,« or a »new system of ideas appropriate to man’s new situation.«4 A »new attitude of mind,« Huxley maintained that transhumanism would address the crisis of humanity by bridging science and the arts and by using science to build a better world. He believed that »the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.«5 According to Huxley, if the task of human-ity is to actualize the immense potential of the human mind and take control of the evolutionary process itself, the human will succeed in the task »only if he faces it consciously and if he uses all his mental resources – knowledge and reason, imagination and sensitivity, capacities for wonder and love, for comprehension an compassion, for spiritual aspiration and moral effort.«6 For that reason, Huxley was an ardent supporter of the eugenics movement and even served as the president of the Eugenics Society (1959–1964).

Huxley was a close friend of John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964) and John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) and the three could be considered »the prophets of transhumanism.«7 Already during the late 1920s and 1930s they advocated many views that would become standard features of contemporary transhumanism: the belief in the ongoing progressive evolution of the human species; the advocacy of genetic engineering (then known as eugenics) for the betterment of the human condition; the replacement of religion by science as the arbiter of truth; the expansion of human cognitive capacity by means of human intervention, and the un­bound faith in the ability of science and technology to manufac-ture a perfect future. This ambitious program for the techno-scientific betterment of humanity, however, suffered a deep set back because of the Nazis’ pernicious use of eugenics and the horrors of WWII, facilitated by technoscience. The goal of creating a new and better world through a centrally imposed vision was invalidated, and the eugenics movement of the 1920s–1930s was discredited. However, the advances of biomedicine toward the end of the 20 th century would make genetic engineering a new and acceptable form of eugenics, now promoted as »human enhancement,« a major theme of transhumanism.

The trauma of WWII made the intention to better humanity by means of technoscience more acute. During the 1940s, especially in England, cybernetics (the science of steersmanship) was developed as »the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine,«8 that is, a systematic study of complex systems such a learning, cognition, adaptation, emergence, communication and efficiency. Blurring the boundaries between animals, humans, and machines, leading cyberneticians (e. g., W. Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer, Gordon Pask, Gregory Bateson and R. D. Laing) gave rise to a new interdisciplinary understanding of humans which integrates physics, biology, brain science, psychiatry, engineering, politics, and economics, taking its inspiration from ecology, art, architec-ture, and management.9 Immediately after WWII, Warren McCullouch and the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation convened scholars from diverse disciplines for ten meetings in New York (1946–1953) to set the foundation for a general science of the workings of the human mind. Attended by the anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, the psychologists Kurt Lewin and Lawrence Kubie, and the mathematicians John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener among others, the Macy Conferences gave rise to the new scien-tific disciplines, including system theories, computer sciences, and information theory, integrating engineering, mathematics, and psychology.10 In these discourses human cognition was no longer exceptional and the idea that humans are ultimately bytes of in-formation was formed. Once the brain is understood cybernetically, a different human future could be imagined and the door to human-machine interface (a major feature of transhumanism) is opened.11

In the 1960s, new optimistic futurism scenarios about humanity were articulated by science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Stanislaw Lem, and later Bruce Sterling, Greg Egan and Vernon Vinge, who speculated about the new, transhuman future.12 Indeed, science fiction »did as much as anything else in the 20th century to push youngsters into engineering,«13 and to fuel the technological imagination. The counter-culture revolution of the 1960s also unleashed the alternative and psychedelic subculture as well as the Human Potential Movement, whose leader, Abraham Maslow, coined the term metahuman to discuss how the self-actualizing person will be able »to go beyond the merely human« and become divine or godlike.14 The notion that humans will be able to transcend their biological limits by means of technology inspired the practice of cryonics, the practice of freezing clinically dead bodies to guarantee them possible future resuscitation of resurrection. The father of cryonics, Robert Ettinger, published The Prospects of Immortality (1962) to be fol-lowed a few years later, by Man into Superman (1972) in which he proposed improvements on the standard human being.15 Within a few decades cryonics and human enhancement would become standard themes of transhumanism as frozen bodies of clinically deceased people were suspended in anticipation to scientific breakthroughs that will facilitate their revival. Cryonics reflected not only the response to the explosion of knowledge in biomedicine and biomedical technologies, but also the deep-seated human quest to attain immortality.

In the 1970s and 1980s a distinctive subculture of futurism emerged, spawning various organizations that advocated life extension, cryonics, space colonization and other fantastic endeavors. A major contributor to this subculture was Freidoun M. Esfandiary, a scholar of future studies at the New School for Social Research, who began to identify »transhumans« as persons who behave in a manner conductive to a posthuman future. Later he changed his name to FM 2030 (the year denoting the date of his hundredth birthday) and his politically oriented works intended to offer a an alterna-tive, upward, »Third Way« to the political Right and the Left camps in American politics.16 Self-proclaimed transhumanists began to coalesce at the University of California-Los Angeles, around the Natasha Vita-More (born Nancy Clark), who wrote the Transhumanist Manifesto (1982) and whose experimental film, »Breaking Away,« revolved around ideas of human beings who overcome their biological and gravitational limits heading into space. In the 1980s ad­vances in biotechnology, neuroscience, and computer sciences began to make their mark on popular culture. Marvin Minsky, an eminent artificial intelligence researcher articulated many of the themes of the transhumanist vision and he was joined by the famous scientific visionaries and techno-utopians such as Ray Kurzweil, Eric Drexler, Frank J. Tipler and Hans Moravec.17 These techno-enthusiasts offered an apocalyptic view in which a rupture, referred to as »The Singularity,« will bring an end to human existence, ushering instead an autonomous, artificially intelligent species (Robo sapiens) that will be in a competition with humanity (Homo sapiens). In this futuristic scenario, transhumanism is the inevitable evolutionary transition from biological humans to super-intelligent posthumans.

Transhumanism received systematic formulation in the 1980s when the philosopher Max More (born Max T. O’Connor and husband of Natasha Vita-More) formalized the transhumanist doc-trine, advocating the »Principles of Extropy.« The opposite of entropy, extropy stands for the continuous improvement of the human condition. According to More, humans are but »a transitional stage standing between our animal heritage and our posthuman future,« which will be reached through »genetic engineering, life extending biosciences, intellectually intensifiers, smarter interfaces to swifter computers, neural-computer integration, a world wide data network, virtual reality, intelligent agents, swift electronic communication, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, neural network, artificial life, off-planet migration, and molecular nanotechnology.«18 For More and other techno-enthusiasts, genetic engineering, clon-ing, and artificial intelligence will reconfigure select humans in a superior transhuman species and then, using robotics, bionics, and nanotechnology, will invent a new posthumans species no longer dependent on nature. Humans will thus transform themselves into posthumans, namely »persons of unprecedented physical, in­tellectual and psychological, self-programming, potentially im­mortal am unlimited individuals.«19

The acceleration of knowledge in genomics, robotics, infor-matics, and nanotechnology (GRIN) during the 1990s boosted the transhumanist movement which benefited as well from the devel-opment of the Internet, the involvement of the military-industrial complex, and the emergence of techno-capitalism.20 Tech entrepreneurs have been crucial to the proliferation of transhumanist ideas and themes in contemporary culture because they have funded many initiatives that could have thrived within traditional institutions of higher learning. In 1992 Max More founded the Extropy Institute and published the first issue of Extropy Maga-zine, expressing the libertarian current of transhumanism (the magazine would close in 2006 and More would shift his efforts on cryonics, functioning as the president of Alcor). In 1998 a group of transhumanist activists (among them Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, David Pearce, Max More and Natasha Vita-More) authored the »Transhumanist Declaration,« stating various ethical positions related to the use of and planning for technological advances.21 That year Nick Bostrom and David Pearce also founded the World Transhumanist Association (WTS) which a decade later after in-tense internal struggle would change its name to »Humanity +.« The organization has been publishing the magazine Humanity + and its project H+ Pedia is a web-based resource for information and collaboration within the transhumanist community.

Since transhumanism was launched by people outside the acad-emy, during the first decade of WTA proponents of transhumanism sought to gain academic legitimacy and prestige by establishing centers and institutes within universities, often with funding from private foundations.22 Thus, in 2004 James Hughes and Nick Bos-trom founded the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) at Trinity University in Hartford Connecticut and in 2005 Nick Bostrom founded the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at Oxford University with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. IEET is a techno-progressive thinktank that seeks to con-tribute to understanding of the likely impact of emerging technol-ogies on individual and societies by »promoting and publicizing the work of thinkers who examine the social implications of scien tific and technological advance.«23 Under the auspices of IEET, Bostrom and Hughes established the Journal of Evolution and Technology, an online peer-review journal that would become the major academic venue for scholarship on transhumanist themes. Similarly, FHI in Oxford has sponsored academic conferences and has given policy advice to the World Economic Forum, to the private and non-profit sector as well as to governmental bodies all over the world. As transhumanism gained academic respectability, scholars of various disciplines, including religious studies, began to engage it, reflecting on its philosophical, ethical, and political ramifica-tions of the transhumanist futuristic vision.

By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century transhumanism was no longer a fringe movement »on the edge« but a mainstream cultural strand that promoted converging technol-ogies and speculations about the future of the human species. During that decade transhumanism also started to take root in the Silicon Valley, with headquarter in Palo Alto, CA. In the Bay Area, »knowledge workers, hippie rebellion, lysergic fantasies, economic neo-liberalism and techno-optimism,«24 merged as high-tech en­trepreneurs (e. g., Peter Thiel, Peter Diamandis, Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk among others) funded all sorts of initiatives, research projects, and institutes. Transhumanist organizations and foundations such as Foresight Institute, Lifeboat Foundation, Methuselah Foundation, Singularity Institute (later renamed Singularity University) and Alcor Life Extension Foundation, SENS Research Foundation, the Brain Preservation Foundation, Twenty-First Century Medicine, Machine, Intelligence, Research Institute (MIRI), the Terasem Movement, and many other website, blogs, Facebook pag-es, forums, and virtual associations express and pursue different aspects of transhumanist futurism. Given its highly decentralized and entrepreneurial nature, transhumanism lacks ideological uniformity, but there are certain themes, postures, and sensibilities that are shared by its advocates who form a social network of like-minded people.

Among the transhumanist »leaders« and »influencers« are Nick Bostrom, George Dvorsky, Ben Goertzel; Aubrey De Grey; James Hughes, Zoltan Istvan, Max More, Tom Morrow (born Tom Bell), Giulio Prisco, Martine Rothblatt (born Martin Rothblatt), Natasha Vita-More, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and many others.25 With affiliated organizations all over the world (e. g., Acociacion Tranhumaista Latinoamericana; Association Française Transhumaniste; Technoprog and others) transhumanism today is a global movement with promoters, consumers, and advocates who communicate via the Internet. Some are political organizations (e. g., Parti Transhumaniste France; Science Party; Technoprogressive; Transhumanism Party; Transhumanist Party; Transhumanist Party Global; Transpolitica) and two well-known transhumanists, Istvan Zoltan and R. U. Sirius, even ran for the presidency;26 other organizations have distinctly religious identity (e. g., Christian Transhumanist Association and Mormon Transhumanist Association). In short, transhumanism is expresses exuberant techno-optimism about the power of technoscience to transform the human condition and inaugurate the posthuman phase in the evolution of the human species.

II Technological Spirituality: The Main Themes of Transhumanism


The overarching impulse of transhumanism is the desire for transcendence which transhumanism understands both »horizontally« and »vertically.« As I stated elsewhere, »in ›horizontal‹ transcen-dence, human beings make deliberate efforts to improve, excel, overcome limits or surpass norms; in ›vertical‹ transcendence, the human either aspires to or claims to encounter a radically other, ultimate reality, which is in principle unknowable.«27 In its pursuit of transcendence transhumanism has much in common with re-ligion, even though most transhumanist define themselves as atheists.28 Expressing our post-secular age, I have shown else-where, transhumanism is a »secularist faith« that »hybridizes the religious with the secular, in effect ›re-enchanting‹ the secular while simultaneously aligning with Enlightenment rationality over religious belief.«29 Transhumanism is »secular« in the sense that it pertains to the mundane world rather than to revealed knowledge or sacred Scriptures, but transhumanism is »faith« because it expresses total trust in the power of (presumably secular) technoscience not only to improve the human condition but also to transcend the human biological condition and bring about immortality.

As a social imaginary, transhumanism is neither science nor pseudo-science, but para-science. Although grounded in scientific knowledge and informed about technological advances, transhumanist is not conducted as a scientific exploration nor does it produce verifiable scientific knowledge. Rather, transhumanism articulates »fantasies that act as a secular answer to the eschatological aspirations of traditional religions,«30 while exhibiting utopian, apocalyptic and eschatological impulses that can be traced to religions of antiquity, especially Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism.31 The utopian impulse of transhumanism is evident in its aspiration to create a society in which individuals will prosper and flourish because human physical and mental abilities will be augmented, social ills such as poverty, sickness, pain, suffering, and ignorance will be eliminated, and people will leave a healthy, long life, perpetually postponing death. The apocalyptic impulse of transhumanism is evident in the claim that the ideal future is imminent and that it will come about as a result of radical, irreversible break from the present. The Singularity is that apocalyptic event that will radically transform reality and the eschaton is imagined as a Virtual Kingdom in which super-intelligence machines constitute »last things.« In the transhumanist futurist scenario, the posthuman phase is the techno-scientific eschaton that imbues human-made technology with salvific value: The Kingdom of God will be realized on Earth through technology, thereby making salvation both imminent and immanent. Here are the main themes of transhumanist technological spirituality.

Transhumanism takes its point of departure from the theory of evolution. The term »transhuman« is short for transitional human, a phase in human evolution from the ordinary human today to the ideal posthuman of the remote future. Julian Huxley, whom we mentioned above, already believed that when people come to fully appreciate the implications of the theory of evolution, they would realize »man’s destiny in the world process.« According to Huxley, mankind is »the dominant portion of this planet and the agent responsible for its future revolution,«32 and he urged his readers »to utilize all available knowledge in giving guidance and encouragement for the continuing adventure of human development.«33 Echoing these ideas, Nick Bostrom, the leading philosopher of transhumanism, states that »transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future that is based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase.«34 He goes on to explain that

Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways. Current humanity need not be the endpoint of evolution. Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology and other rational means, we shall eventually manage to become posthuman, beings with vastly greater capacity than present human beings have.35

While the process of evolution has brought us to the present, evolution has also endowed the human being with the capacity to intervene in the evolutionary process and change its direction. Gregory Stock, an early proponent of transhumanism, who heads the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life in UCLA, concurs with Bostrom that »the human species is moving out of its childhood.« According to Stock,

»It is time for us to acknowledge our growing powers and begin to take responsibility for them. We have little choice in this, for we have begun to play god in so many of life’s intimate realms that we probably could not turn back if we tried.«36

We will not engage the trope of »playing God« here,37 but only note that according to Stock by employing genetic engineering the human organism can be moved beyond what Stock considers the »decrepit condition« of the human species. It is precisely our dramatic progress of technological capabilities that enables us to transform ourselves into persons whose capacities will exceed what we today recognize by the term ›human.‹ The proponents of transhumanism thus encourage deliberate intervention in the biological makeup of the human species that will enable us to engineer future generations. Whether we call the process »radical evolution,« »direct evolution,« »enhancement evolution,« »designer evolution,« or »conscious evolution,« the goal is to replace chance with choice by means of technoscience.38 In control of evolution, the human becomes the Homo gubernator, the steersman of its own destiny.39

The main justification for human intervention in the evolu-tionary process is the Enlightenment ideal of »progress.« Michael S. Burdet has shown how »transhumanism depends upon and ex­tends this rampant and robust myth and how its enthusiasts subsequently derive religious value from it.«40 Tracing the history of the myth of progress from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment, Burdet highlights the importance of Francis Bacon, commonly considered »the father of modern science,« who infused »a scientific basis into the origin of our modern myth of progress.«41

Although the modern myth of technoscientific progress was challenged in the 19th century by Romantics and Existentialist philosophers, it was accentuated in the 20th century as part of the ideology of modernity; transhumanism only radicalizes the myth of technological progress. As an ideology of extreme progress, transhumanism focuses not only on the betterment of society and economy but on the »improvement« of the human body, including the human brain, by means of technology.

Using technology is inherent to the Homo faber (i. e., the tool-making human). Humans have always enhanced themselves through technological inventions in their attempts to mastery their physical environment. In so doing, humans have also transformed every aspect of human life and human culture. Thus, technologies as diverse as agriculture, writing, calculus, antibiotics, and computers have all transformed human life and have definitely »enhanced« humans, but there is a qualitative difference between biomedical technologies and previous technologies. Today humans are able not only to interfere with and transform their own biol-ogical makeup, but also to engineer future generations. The proponents of biotechnological enhancement consider it a good that will improve human physical and mental capacities, extend life, and in general improve the quality of human life. Through genetic engineering, humans will eliminate deleterious genes that cause dis-ease, pain, and suffering and will even try to postpone the ultimate threat to human life – death. For supporters of this agenda »liberal eugenics« (in contrast to the »authoritarian eugenics« of the Nazis) is commendable because it expands the liberal ideals of freedom, choice and diversity.42

The meliorist agenda has had many critics, most famous of whom are Francis Fukuyama, Leon Kass, and Michael J. Sandel, who have challenged the philosophical assumptions and ethical ramifications of bio-engineering.43 The debates about human enhancement has been raging for three decades, covering the meaning of human nature, fairness in sport, equality in education, social jus-tice, sex selection, cosmetics and anti-aging, the institution of the family, reproductive liberty, abortion, disability, stem-cell re­search, human cloning, organ replacement, child welfare and hu-m-an mortality. These debates have not generated consensus, and with each new bio-engineering technology (most recently the gene editing technology of CRISPR-Cas9) the debate begins anew.44 Putting a stop to the technological march toward »progress« has turned out to be very difficult not because the opponents’ arguments lack merit, but because technology is big business that benefits a lot of interested parties. Ethics could hardly match the power of capitalism.

Transhumanists are neither impressed nor impacted by their critics, whom they simply dismiss as »bio-Conservative« or »bio-Luddites.« Like true believers, so convinced are they of their own righteousness that they view their critics as annoying hurdles one must ignore or summarily dismiss on the march of technoscien-tific paradise.45 The engineering of human biology comes in three types of strategies: there are ›negative‹ interventions, aimed at curing disease or elimination of a disability; ›positive‹ interven-tions, aimed at improving the function of the human organization within the range of natural variation; and ›enhancement‹ an intervention aiming to take an individual beyond the normal functioning of human organism. These enhancement strategies allegedly enable human beings to be »healthier, more beautiful, more athletic, more intelligent, more creative, more pleasant, and many other ›mores.‹46 Transhumanism seeks to make us »better humans,« by adding on to or altering what is within the range of normal human life, but what exactly does »better human« mean is rather vague, and perhaps even incoherent.47 Since transhumanism understands »being more« or »doing better« to pertain to the functioning and performance of the human body, and since they privilege choice over chance, transhumanists advocate »morphological freedom,« namely »the right to modify and enhance one’s body, cognition and emotion.«48 In other words, transhumanists advocate the freedom to choose a body we wish to have regardless of birth facts.49

Philosophically, morphological freedom is legitimated by an appeal to the Hedonistic Imperative, articulated by David Pearce,50 and politically, morphological freedom is promoted as an individual civic right.51 Pearce presents his project as »a manifesto [that] outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient lives.« He defends this abolitionist project on »ethical utilitarian grounds« and asserts that »genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy wetware of our evolutionary past,« promising that »our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world.« For Pearce, Darwinian evolution has rendered human beings profoundly flawed, but thanks to biotechnology, humanity will »emerge from the psychochemical Dark Ages, [and] enriched dopaminergic function in particular will sharpen the sheer intensity of every moment of conscious exis-tence.« He calls for »neuroscientific mind-making« as a »rational redesign« that will reframe »who and what we want to become.« Pearce concedes that »what we will ultimately turn into is hard to imagine,« but he also ventures to predict that »it will be utterly sublime.« The religious tone of this statement is unmistakable. Pearce’s hedonism echoes the language of the psychedelic counter-culture of the 1960s and his view of human embodiment as a »ghetto« from which humans must be liberated by means of pharmacological enhancement only creates a more restrictive ghetto, because it presupposes that human beings are entirely chemically dependent, experien cing no freedom at all. Pearce and other »bio-progres-sives« pro-mote »happy-people pills« that will make people feel »better than well.«52 Welcome to the drug subculture in which pills deliver »happiness.«

Liberating the human self from the limits of evolutionary bi-ology is one reason why transhumanism is attractive to certain people, especially those who feel trapped in the sexualized body which does not conform to their subjective identity. For many transhumanists the very differentiation between males and fe-males is increasingly viewed as a burdensome aspect of being human, so that morphological freedom is invoked to justify the transition from one sexed body to another. Leading transhumanists have argued that gender is an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation on human potential and that biotechnology, neurotechnology and assistive reproductive technologies can liberate us from that harmful binary dichotomy.53 Transgenderism is very common in the subculture that is suffused with transhumanist ideas. Thus Martine Rothblatt, the founder and leader of Terasem Movement, declares that »the greatest catapult for humanity into a new species lies just beyond the event horizon of transgenderism.«54 She re-joices in the fact that »a movement of ›transhumanists‹ has joined transgenderists in calling for the launch of persona creatus.« For Rothblatt, since »the mind is deeper than matter,« a person can assume any body he or she wishes, whether to resolve gender dysphoria or for any other reason.

Nowhere is this creative freedom more evident than in cyber- space, where avatars, namely, nonbiological simulations of the self, choose the form of their self-presentation and change it at will. Derived from ›cybernetics,‹ cyberspace, ironically enough, »conveys the meaning of being a controlled or governed space.«55 But it is in cyberspace where people feel at liberty to recreate themselves »as if« they are someone else.56 Cyberspace is presumably the »place« where liberation from biology can be experienced because in it there is no connection between gender and genitals, no need for biological reproduction, and no suffering caused by human corporea-lity. This is quite ironic because the ability to be free of sexual embodiment is possible only because biomedical technologies have actualized in the flesh what previously has been only an unrealiz-able fantasy. If indeed existence in silico is so much better than existence in corpore, why bother changing the corporeal body? The transition from one gendered body to another makes sense only if life in organic bodies is inherently good, which transhumanists vociferously deny. Be this as it may, cyberspace manifests the full force of technological spirituality, a virtual terrain in which »autonomous entities with they own type of ›life‹ such as AI, viruses, and bots,«57 manifest the allure, seductiveness and power of virtual communication. Cyberspace generates its own magic and awe as participants relocate the sacred to the digital realm.58

For transhumanists, more offensive than embodied sexuality is the fact that all human bodies are destined to die. Although transhumanists disdain the decrepit human body, instead of welcoming death, which could finally relieve them from the burden of corporeality, transhumanists are outraged by death and find it an affront and an insult.59 Aubrey de Grey, a leading transhumanist, has de­clared a »crusade to defeat aging,« which for him is »not only morally justified but is the single most urgent imperative for humanity.«60 For De Grey, aging is by no means a biological inevitability, but a disease that could be overcome if we understand the cellular and molecular processes of aging. Calling for a new approach to aging that will promise and deliver radical life extension and the perpetual postponement of death, De Grey champions »Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence« (SENS), as »an umbrella term for a range of biomedical therapies with the ultimate purpose of postponing age-related effect.«61 He considers defeating aging a humanitarian project that has many health benefits. Like a vintage car, so De Grey maintains, the human body is a machine whose life span can be extended through periodic maintenance and rebuilding. De Grey strategies to defeat the mechanisms of aging are intended to make it possible for humans to live in a »post-aging world.«62 De Grey concedes that postponing death is not abolishing death, but he promotes longevity research as the path to long and happy life.

If death cannot be vanquished, perhaps it could be outsmarted or tricked. That is the purpose of cryonics, the program to keep dead biological humans in deep freeze in order to resurrect them in the posthuman future. If we are to believe Eric Drexler, the father of nanotechnology and an ardent supporter of cryonics, and Ray Kurtz-weil, the noted inventor and currently chief engineer of Google, the science of nanotechnology will make the ancient belief technologically possible although the details remain very vague. In his program that lays out the steps to achieve (»practical«) immortality,63 Kurzweil says very little about the transcendence of biology by means of nanotechnology, but the key point is that nanotechnology is information technology. Kevin Kelly, the founder and editor of Wired magazine and another influential techno-enthusiast states that information is »the entity closest to God.«64 If so, we should not be surprised that Kurzweil and other techno-enthusiasts see information as the path to divinization. For Kurzweil, the nanotechnology revolution will not only re-program and optimize biology, but will involve »applying massively parallel computerized processes to reorganize matter and energy at the molecular level to create new ma-terials and new mechanisms even more intricate and powerful than biology.«65 According to him, when the biological human will be replaced by mechanical posthuman, we will experience the technological sublime. Until then, humanity has not only to transform itself but increasingly integrate humans and computers to augment human capabilities and transform them into technological entities.

With pacemakers, cochlear implants, retinal implants, deep brain stimulation, brain-computer interface, and neuroprosthetics, the boundaries between organic and artificial life is removed and the door to the post-biological, posthuman species is now wide open.

Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, already theorized that information could flow from human to machine and from machine to human. Developing Wiener’s insights, brain-computer in­terface technology and neuro-prosthetics are based on the assumption that »the electrical activity within network of neurons located in the brains of humans and animals constitutes actual information … and this neurological information functions as a control sys­tem for animals and humans in the same way that control systems use information to regulate activities of machine.«66 It means that »information can flow from biological system to machine, where it directs the machine’s operation,« and »in turn, information can flow from machine to animal and human brains and provide feed-back to the organism about the exterior world.«67 The benefits of these technological breakthroughs seem obvious: robotic limbs give amputees the possibility of moving, brain implants hold promise to help patients living with Parkinson, Alzheimer, or ALS a new lease on life, and deep brain stimulation promises to cure mental illness such as depression and schizophrenia. For trans-humanists the merger of humans and machines is not only about curing diseases and addressing lost bodily capacities or functions, but about enhancing human beings so that humanity could move to­ward a posthuman future.

Transhumanists present the transition from biological humanity to mechanical posthumanism as an inexorable, necessary progression which they deem to be progress for humanity.68 The process by which biological humans will be replaced by super-intelligent machines is described in many ways, but they are all based on the engineering of the human brain, the organ that make humans most distinct and different from other animals. Currently we are still in the Mechanical Age in which humans use their brain to build Artificial Intelligence (AI), computers whose computational capacities far exceed human abilities. At present humans and ro­bots coexist but computers increasingly perform all sorts of functions that humans either cannot or do not want to perform, so that computer »serve« humanity. Accelerated, exponential programs of AI technology, however, will facilitate the ultimate form of machine-brain interface: the uploading of the human mind onto supercomputers.69 Presumably when uploading is achieved, intelligent machines will be able to teach themselves and correct their own mistakes. This consists the irreversible turning point, known as technological Singularity, or AI Singularity, in which super-intelligent machinesbecome autonomous and self-aware, inaugurating the Age of Mind. Eventually they will »tire of caring for humanity and will decide to spread throughout the universe in the interest of discovering all the secrets of the cosmos.«70 At that point, biological humans will long be gone and all that will remain is Transcendent Mind, a cosmic intelligence that thinks itself eternally. Death will be vanquished once and for all and humanity will accomplish its dream of eternal life but attaining that technological fantasy entails making humanity obsolete. In short, trans-humanism is the program for the planned obsolescence of the human species.71

III Transhumanism as Techno-Idolatry


Transhumanism is rooted in the »fundamental belief in the power of the human will to transform the world to reflect human desires, through the agency of technology.«72 The advocates of trans-human-ism put their hope and trust in the ability of technology to solve the world’s problems and bring about the end of pain and suffering, but in truth it is a program that calls for the obsolescence of biological humanity and its replacement by posthuman super-intelligent machines. The sublime is defined technologically, and human-made technology is invested with the aura of the sub-lime.73

How should world religions respond to transhumanism vision, especially the Abrahamic traditions that regard biological humans to be created in the »image of God?« For the past two decades scholars of religious studies, theologians, and religious philosophers have engaged transhumanism, some enthusiastically welcoming it, others cautiously critiquing it, and still other resolutely denounc-ing it.74 I have joined the critics of transhumanism and have done so from a Judaic perspective. Although Judaism is rather open to biomedical technologies because of their therapeutic benefits, the Judaic perspective is critical of the underlying metaphysical dualism presupposed by transhumanism.75 Specifically I have been critical of transhumanism for investing human-made technology with salvific meaning because transhumanism worships and venerates the human agent as if the human is a god.76 Bluntly put, transhumanism is techno-idolatry in which humans not only claim to »play God,« but claim to be god.

In the digital age the interface between biological humans and machines through computers, robots, and the Internet, Artificial Intelligence has reconfigured finance, transportation, communication, energy, defense systems, warfare, medicine, labor, leisure, art, culture, education. In this regard, we are already well into the transhumanist transition from biological humans to mechanical posthumans, but that process is so well advanced because the critique of transhumanism during the past three decades has failed to gain traction. Perhaps the critique will become more effective if we expose the idolatrous nature of veneration of technology and the worship of its human makers, the tech-entrepreneurs. Today the tech companies (e. g., Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook), their human makers (i. e., Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, LarryandSergey,77 and Mark Zuckerberg respectively) and their technological products (e. g., the PC, the iMac, the iPhone, the iPad, and numerous other digital gadgets) govern every aspect of our life, robbing us from our freedom, our privacy, and our dignity. They are our new »iGods.«78 Whether the techies define themselves as transhumanists or not, they have created the digital environment that advances the transhumanist agenda. I consider digital culture a form of techno-idolatry, because it entails reverence to an aspect of reality as if it were ultimate reality. If Francis Bacon argued that modern science should destroy the »idols,« namely, illusions rooted in human perceptions and the fallible human senses,79 transhumanism replaces them with technological idols.

What is idolatry and how can modern technology be considered a form of idolatry? To answer the questions we need, of course, to turn first to the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3–5) that declare:

»You shall have no other gods before Me;

You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth;

You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God …,«

Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit explain that the biblical »prohibition against idolatry entails not only a ban on the worship of other gods, but also a ban on certain ways of representing the right God.«80 Because the Creator God is radically different from the created world, no created thing can represent God or image of God. The Prophet Isaiah elaborated the prohibition on images proclaiming: »I am the Lord, that is My name; /I will not give My glory to another, /nor My praise to graven images« (Is 42:8). The prophet thus makes clear that only God deserves to be venerated and »to worship an image of any part of the creation is to take away from the incomparable glory of God.«81 The Bible forbids the representation of God in images and pictures, because the worshipper »worships the image itself and not what the image represents.«82 In worshipping idols, the worshipper not only blurs the gap between the god and the world but also the idol takes the place of the god. For that reason the prophets rejected idol worship because »people be­come like the idols that they worship, that is, they are described as becoming like the idolatrous objects of worship are portrayed.«83 Idol worship is a form of fetishization in which the worshipper mistakenly substitutes some object for the god. This substitution is sinful because for the worshipper »the image is not a sign or symbol of god […] it is god.«84 In idolatry the worshipper commits the error of substitution because »the idol takes the place of the god in the eye of the worshipper.«85

The primary metaphor for the covenantal relationship between God and Israel is marriage, and the primary biblical metaphor for idolatry is adultery, namely, engaging in forbidden sexual rela-tions. Why? Because idols pull the worshipper away from the living God in the same way that »outside love interests are dangerous to a marriage. Adulterous liaisons inevitably pull the marriage apart at the seams.«86 Like adultery, idolatry is a sin of betrayal, of disloyalty, and hence the Bible depicts God as a jealous husband who was deeply humiliated when Israel »whored« after »alien gods,« namely other deities, and their useless idols. Richard Lintz clarifies how the biblical prohibition on idolatry is connected to the biblical notion that humans are created »in the image of God:«

»The imago Dei of Genesis 1:27 is the striking counterexample to the universal ban on images in worship. This ›image‹ is not an object of corrupted desires, yet the image bearer is strikingly prone to chase after graven images. The image bearer finds purpose in worship, quite obviously not as an object of worship but as the one whose significance and security are defined by the reflection and representation of God. Graven images by contrast draw these image bearers away from their doxological relationship to God and thereby virtually replace the Creator with the created.«87

Creation in the image of God means that humankind reflect the divine being in some way, or put differently, »this reflection and relationship to God is the defining aspect of humankind in crea-tion.«88 But humans relate to God not as equals but as bearers of His image, namely, as creatures who relate to God through their actions. By contrast, in idolatry the human inverts the image of God and undermines the relationship with God by becoming loyal and even addicted to other entities which the human deifies as a replacement of God.

The radical aniconism of biblical monotheism was intellectually, theologically and emotionally challenging. Therefore, throughout the history of Judaism there were counter impulses that sought to relax biblical aniconism, either by elaborating the an-thropomorphic and anthropopathic depiction of God or by worshiping natural objects (e. g., stars) as intermediaries between God and humanity.89 In the 12th century Moses Maimonides (d. 1204) rejected these impulses insisting on the radical transcendence of God. According to Maimonides, the prohibition of idolatry includes not only rejection of iconic representation of God, but also the rejec-tion of metaphoric language by which the God of Israel is repre-sented. For Maimonides, if one takes the biblical anthropomorphic language literally, one is engaged in idolatry.90 Because God is radically transcendent, God cannot be compared to anything or be linguistically represented because there is an unbridgeable ontolo-gical gap between the Creator and the created world. All religious language about God pertains not to the essence of God, but to God’s activities in the created world.91 These attributes of action tell us not who God is but what God does and all other references to God should be understood in a negative way, namely as negation of imperfections. Although not all Jews accepted Maimonides’ insistence on radical transcendence of God, his uncompromising position helps us to see what is problematic about the veneration of technology today. Simply put, if idolatry is the veneration of that which is not God as if it is God, then the veneration and reverence of technology is idolatrous. The fetish becomes a substitute for God.

That transhumanism is a »techno-idolatry« becomes evident when we listen to how transhumanists describe their technological projects. For example, the Italian transhumanist, Giulio Prisco, is a former physicist and computer scientist in Europe’s space agency who hails the merger between humans and machines as »the ultimate realization of the dream to achieve indefinite lifespan, with vastly enhanced cognitive abilities, lies in leaving biology behind and moving a to new post-biological, cybernetic phase of our evolution.«92 Prisco unambiguously states that when this is achieved »we will build (and/or) become God(s).«93 He goes on to boldly predicting: »someday we may create God. And if we create God, then We are God.«94 What does he mean by these statements? Prisco’s conception of God is non-theistic and as a secularist he is not obligated by the prohibition of biblical monotheism, but the fact that he uses religious language to speak about ultimate telos of transhumanism belie the idolatrous nature of his aspirations. Prisco’s God is not a person or a personality with whom humans have a relationship, but an impersonal, abstract force that govern the universe. Influenced by the Russian Cosmists and by the French Jesuit paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin, Prisco adopted an evolution-ary, vitalist philosophy that the entire universe is evolving toward a maximum level of complexity and consciousness, the Omega Point in which God is identical with mind, or supreme consciousness.95 Prisco maintains that this spiritual view is utterly com-patible with science, and he aligns himself with other theoretical physicists such as Freeman Dyson, for whom God is »the world soul,« or Frank J. Tippler for whom computer intelligence is equivalent of God. We should note that Prisco’s futuristic speculations have had enormous impact on popular culture, since he was the one who brought transhumanist ideas to the global gaming commun-ity. Prisco is the founder of the game Metaverse in Second Life and the co-founder of the Order of Cosmic Engineers, whose goal is »uploading our consciousness and exploring the universe as disembodied super-minds.«96 What should matter to us is not whether Prisco can argue theologically for his position but rather that the digital environment he and many others have engineered impacts the life of millions of people who worship videogames such as Second Life and experience it as alternate reality.97

Perhaps one could argue that transhumanist futurism is no more than an idle fantasy that will never come true because contemporary science does not support the transhumanist scenario.98 While I am sympathetic to this claim, my approach is different. What matters to me is that transhumanist futurism is not merely idle fantasy but a narrative that inspires actual technologies that transform our life in the present. We need to assess the merit of transhumanism not by judging whether it is plausible in the remote future, but how it impacts our life in the here and now. Alas, when we look carefully and critically at the impact of technology on our present life, we encounter many disturbing social ills, including addictiveness, deceptiveness, shallowness, loneliness, lack of empathy, viciousness, joblessness, misogyny, racism, hate speech, and numerous others.99 Of course, these ills are not new to the human experience, but they have been exacerbated by digital technology because it reduces humans to bytes of information that can be manipulated, monetized, and controlled. In other words, technology dehumanizes us, because it diminishes our »image of God;« by worshipping technology, we venerate that which we have created, namely, idols, instead of God, and we have become like them, that is, unfeeling, uncaring, and asocial robots. Transhumanists have remained silent about the deleterious aspects of the technol-ogy they so admire but a quick look at economic, political, and educational impact of the technology they so revere makes clear that technological progress has an unacknowledged dark side.

Today both the nature of the workplace and the nature of the market, especially the stock market, have been profoundly transformed by AI that controls the labor force (due to automation) and the market (due to investing by algorithms). A special issue of The Economist (October 3, 2019) declared intelligent machines »the masters of the universe,« a phrase that ambiguously refers both to the machine as well as to the humans who created them, control them, and benefit from them. The special issue shows how com-puters have taken control of investing, not just the buying and selling of securities, but also the commanding heights of monitoring the economy and allocating capital. New artificial intelligence programs are also writing their own investing rules, in why their human masters only partly understand. All industries have already been changed by automation, but finance is unique because it exerts voting power over firms, redistributing wealth which can cause mayhem in the economy. Since the 1980s computers have conquered swaths of financial industry. First to go was the chore of executing buy-and-sell orders. On the trade floor one can hear the hub of servers not the roars of traders. High frequency trading now exploits tiny differences in the prices of similar securities, using a barrage of transactions. In the past decade computers have grad-uated to running portfolios and every year computers are gaining higher degree of autonomy as software programs using AI devise their own strategies without needing human guidance. Now an almost infinite supply of new data and processing power is crating novel ways to assess investments, and eventually AI would have fresher information about specific firms than even their boards do.

Algorithms, the new masters of the universe, are the new idols on which we utterly depend and which we constantly update in the name of the idol of »innovation.« Like the popular TV show, »American Idol,« tech companies use the competitive ethos to stimulate cutting-edge innovations, but we should remember that these very innovations were responsible were spooky crashes of the stock market in 2010, 2016, and 2018. Technological innovations are not al­ways beneficial, and they are never benign or innocent. In the labor market someone always pays (either by losing one’s employment or sometimes even by losing one’s life) for someone else’s technolog-ical innovation. Computerized finance is not only very risky, it is also profoundly unequal, because it concentrates wealth as portfolio performance rests more on processing power and data so that those with clout could make disproportionate amount of money. Most alarmingly, the prospect that computers, the new »masters of the universe,« will take over human investors has be-c ome very realistic, because the execution of orders on the stock market is now dominated by algorithmic traders rather than by humans. As algorithms not only mimic human strategies but create strategies themselves, machines’ market dominance is sure to extend further. Currently humans still pick and choose what to feed into the machines, but eventually the human minders will become irrelevant. As few (human) investors get richer and richer, the path toward making humanity obsolete, the telos of trans-humanism, is being accomplished through the stock market, while millions of people face financial ruin or loss of meaning and purpose.

The technologization of the economy by Artificial Intelligence also undermines our political life. Market economy and market democracy are the two pillars of the modern Liberal state, but today these pillars have been corroded by AI. Shoshana Zubboff has demonstrated in great detail that AI has created »surveillance capitalism« which is robbing us or our freedom, our privacy, and our dignity.100 The digitation of life has turned biological human be­ings into data that can be harvested to determine everything about us. The tech companies, our new technological idols, have taken our personal data (which people voluntarily share with them) and have monetized them for their own enrichment. While the com-panies demand total freedom to launch any novel practice (i. e., the technological innovation) they aggressively assert their right to be free from legal regulations. We have become information for sale, but tech companies accumulate our data to surveille and profit from our life while we remain utterly ignorant about what they do with our information. When we become data to be mined so as to identify patterns of human behavior, we are dispossessed of our own lived experience; we become part of the algorithm that benefits not us but someone else be it the tech-entrepreneur or the tech corporation that buys and sells data that influence all aspect of life, including our political life. As raw material for tech corporations, we have lost the dignity of our embodied spirituality that makes it possible for us to sense, perceive, feel, desire, yearn, hope, communicate, and create sophisticated civilizations.

The deleterious impact of technology on politics is evident in another negative aspect of the information age: disinformation, namely, the intentional corruption of information for the purpose of benefitting someone or something. Information corruption now abounds through fraudulent practices on social media platforms which tech companies such as Facebook, Google or Twitter refuse to regulate. Today numerous sites disseminate hate speech, ex-treme political content, terrorist plots, conspiracy theories, racist and anti-Semitic propaganda, all of which distort the quality of political discourse, undermine civic institutions, and spread distrust of civic life.101 The tech-entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg justifies his refusal to regulate content on the social media platforms in his control by appealing to his dream of a »a global community that works for all of us.«102 While his grandiose dream promises that by coming together we will be able to solve the largest problems facing humanity such as terrorism, climate change, or pandemics, in truth his utopian rhetoric only disguises lust for profit and power which is dangerous to the future of democracy.103 The wide spread of fraud perverts democracy all over the world and fa-cilitates the rise of totalitarianism, yet another form of idolatry, in which a human being demands total loyalty and uses the apparatus of the state to impose total control over citizens. Regimes in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the United States are inching toward authoritarianism and that could not have happened with-out disinformation and fraudulent use of technology.

The tyranny of human rulers and the tyranny of machines are intertwined, and the widespread use of AI facilitates both.104 In defense one may say that machines have eliminated chaos, uncertainty, conflict, abnormality and discord, giving us instead predictability, regularity, transparency, and precision. But we have paid dearly for these presumed achievements that have only enslaved us to the tech corporation. If the connection between AI, surveillance capitalism, tyranny, and transhumanism is not clear, all we need to do is to look at Jeff Bezos, an ardent transhumanist whose futurism consists of millions fellow earthlings to relocate to colonies in space.105 Bezos wants to control more and more of the here and now in order to realize that future dream and he funds ventures that build rockets, rovers, and the needed infrastructure for them, by selling 1 billion of Amazon stock each year. His company, Blue Origin, which he considers his most important work, focuses on voyage beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, but he fears that the plan-et’s growing energy demand will eventually outstrip its limited supply. The result will be stasis, which for Bezos means a very bad future. Diminished growth is what matters to him most, so Amazon, is organized to offer »the best selection, the lowest prices, and the cheapest and most convenient delivery,«106 in order to avert that scenario. Amazon is a retail company, but Bezos is tech-entrepreneur who endorses transhumanist futurism, even though he does not publicize his fantasies.

The digital/information revolution and the proliferation of AI have not increased our freedom, but only brought us ever closer to autocracy and dictatorship. Perhaps, one could say, we need not worry about these developments because good education, which requires the cultivation of character, will inoculate us against authoritarianism. Yet, in the digital age education too has been transformed by technology and the ancient goal of character cultivation and the pursuit of wisdom have been replaced by emphasis on computation and ability to access Big Data, namely large data sets that can be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interaction. The humanities have responded to the Big Data by giving rise to »digital humanities.« In the late 1990s and early 2000s the digital humanities consisted of »large scale digitation projects and the establishments of technological infrastructure,«107 and since 2010, the digital humanities created »the environments and tools for producing, curating, and interacting with knowledge that is ›born digital‹ and lives in various digital contexts.«108

Those who promote the digital humanities call all humanities scholars to change their research methods by working with Big Data, but I contend that computation, digitation and abstraction that characterize the digital humanities have only furthered the transhumanist agenda at the expense of genuine education that understand why humans are not data and why they must not be objectified.109 Human distinction does not lie in computation, but in the unique capacity to enter a dialogue with the Other through communication and interpretation, in the cultivation of good character traits (i. e., the virtues) and in the capacity to love and to feel empathy toward others especially those who experience pain and suffering. Humans are social animals who thrive in politics where justice, equality, and difference are honored and protected. Therefore, the humanities today must resist the dehumanization caused by digitation and mechanization, and prepare young people to assume civic responsibility, defend democracies against authoritarianism and totalitarianism, and enable people to become compassionate, caring, and loving. The digital humanities’ veneration of Big Data is no less idolatrous than the veneration of money, power, youth, or progress, all of which dehumanize us, diminishing our »image of God,« our infinite depth that

resists quanti-fication but calls on us to act responsibly, as Hans Jonas already taught us. Hans Jonas (d. 1993), one of the most prescient critics of modern technology, has understood the idolatrous nature of modern technology, made it possible for the Homo faber to redesign the human »in his own image« rather than in the image of God.110

Conclusion


Transhumanism is the ideology that gives coherence to our technological age. Claiming to make us »better humans« by engineer-ing us to become faster, stronger, smarter, younger looking, or longer-living, transhumanism has made us all obsessed with and addicted to technology. By fetishizing technology transhumanism makes humans like the digital technology it has created: indifferent, uncaring, and emotionally detached. Transhumanism has not improved the quality of life, but it has legitimized the heavy price we have been paying for our technological obsession and addictions.111 The negative impact of technology on our life is massive, but it is doubtful that the technological »genie« could be put back into the proverbial bottle. Contrary to transhumanist myth of progress, the process is not inevitable but within our decision-making powers. If we cannot reverse the process, at least we might try to slow down the technologization of life if world religions, especially the Abrahamic traditions, highlight the idolatrous na­ture of technology in which humans venerate themselves by worshipping their own products. The technologization of humanity has not made us better humans and has not made our society more caring, just, or equitable. If we remember that humans are created in the image of God, perhaps we, the bearers of the divine image, might be able to prevent our own dehumanization brought about by the destructive fantasies of transhumanism. Making humanity obsolete is the telos of transhumanism, but its proponents have not worked out what it means for us today to live in the specter of human obsolescence.

Abstract


Der Transhumanismus ist eine soziale und intellektuelle Bewegung, die den Einsatz von Technowissenschaften zur Gestaltung der Evolution der menschlichen Spezies proklamiert. Obwohl der Transhumanismus eher eine sozialphilosophische Idee als eine wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis ist, basiert er auf wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen und technologischen Durchbrüchen. Darum be­hauptet er, die Zukunft der Technowissenschaften vorhersagen und beeinflussen zu können. Der Transhumanismus will die physiologischen und mentalen Fähigkeiten menschlicher Körper verbessern und die Dauer des menschlichen Lebens radikal verlängern, ja sogar (digitale) Unsterblichkeit erreichen. Obwohl sich die meisten Transhumanisten als Atheisten betrachten, ist der Transhumanismus voller utopischer, apokalyptischer und eschatolo-gischer Motive, die die Technowissenschaften mit spiritueller und sogar soteriologischer Bedeutung ausstatten. Der Transhumanismus artikuliert eine technologische Spiritualität, die zu unserem post-säkularen Zeitalter passt, in dem »Welt« spirituell aufgeladen wird und Transzendenz innerhalb eines sogenannten »immanenten Rahmens« gefunden werden soll.

Angesichts seiner Verbreitung in der zeitgenössischen Kultur sollte der Transhumanismus ernst genommen, aber kritisch bearbeitet werden. Dieser Aufsatz führt die inhärenten Paradoxien des Transhumanismus in Bezug auf Transzendenz, Verkörperung und das Telos des menschlichen Lebens vor Augen. Aus biblischer Sicht ist Transhumanismus nicht der Weg zur Erlösung, sondern Techno-Götzendienst, der digitale Technologie und ihre menschlichen Macher verehrt, als wären sie Götter. Theologisch gesehen ist die Anbetung der Technologie Rebellion gegen und Verrat an Gott bzw. Verehrung des falschen Gottes.

Fussnoten:

1) For introduction to transhumanism written by its advocates see Nick Bostrom, »The Transhumanist FAQ: A General Introduction 2.1:« http://humandefinition.blogspot.com/2009/10/transhumanist-faq.html accessed on August 2020; Natasha Vita-More, Transhumanism: What Is It? (Coppell, TX 2018).
2) Nick Bostrom, »A History of Transhumanist Thought,« Journal of Evolution and Technology 14 (2) (2005); reprinted in: Academic Writing Across the Disciplines, ed. Michael Rectenwald and Lisa Carl (New York 2011), 1–30.
3) Julian Huxley, New Bottles for New Wine (London 1957), 17.
4) Huxley, ibid., 255.
5) Huxley, ibid., 17.
6) Julian Huxley, Evolutionary Humanism (Buffalo, NY 1992 [1954]), 78.
7) See Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, »Science and the Betterment of Humanity: Three British Prophets of Transhumanism,« in Building Better Humans? Refocusing the Debate on Transhumanism, ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Kenneth L. Mossman (Frankfurt a. M. 2012), 55–82.
8) Norbert Wiener, »Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication of in the Animal and the Machine« (Paris and Cambridge, MA 1948) 248.
9) Andrew Pickering, »Cybernetics and the Mangle: Ashby, Beer and Pask,« Social Studies of Science (2002): S. A. Umpleby, »A History of the Cybernetics Movement in the United States,« Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 91 (2) (2005), 54–66.
10) The content of these conferences is available in »Cybernetics: The Macy Conferences 1946–1953, The Complete Transactions,« ed. Claus Pias (Chicago 2016).
11) These possibilities are explored in Andrew Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future (Chicago 2010).
12) On science fiction as contributor to transhumanist futurism see Michael S. Burdet, Eschatology and the Technological Future (New York and London 2015), 47–79; cf., N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (Chicago 1999).
13) Burdet, ibid., 48.
14) Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (New York 1971), 274. Maslow’s emphasis on self-actualization and his research on peak experiences has much in common with Deepak Chopra, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential (London 2019), although they come to it from different starting points: Maslow was a secular Jew and Chopra is a Hindu.
15) Robert C. W. Ettinger and C. Michael Perry, The Prospects of Immortality (Ann Arbor, MI 2005 [1962]); Robert C. W. Ettinger and Nick Bostrom, Man into Superman: The Startling Potential of Human Evolution – and How To Be Part of It (Ann Arbor, MI 2005 [1972]. Since cryonics is a major theme of contemporary transhumanism it is no wonder that Ettinger’s books have been reissued by transhumanists.
16) Freidoun M. Esfandiary, Optimism One: The Emerging Radicalism (New York 1970); idem., Up-Wingers: A Futurist Manifesto (New York 1973).
17) See Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge 1990); idem, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (New York 1999); idem, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (New York 2005); Eric K. Drexler, Engines of Creation (Garden City, NY 1986); idem, Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation (New York 1992); Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge, MA 1998); idem, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (New York 1999); Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Death (New York 1994).
18) Max More, »Extropian Principles 3.0,« 2004, www.maxmore.cpm/ extprn3.htm.
19) Ibid.
20) The confluence of these developments is discussed in Joel Garreau, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies – And What It Means to be a Human (New York 2005).
21) The »Transhumanist Declaration« is available in The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, ed. Max More and Natasha Vita-More (Malden, MA 2013), 54-55.
22) This development was facilitated by the structural changes of private and public universities, the growing investment of private funding in public universities, and interdisciplinarity.
23) http://ieet.org.
24) Roberto Manzocco, Transhumanism: Engineering the Human Condition; History, Philosophy and Current Status (Chichester et al. 2019), 38.
25) A useful but partial list of »Who’s Who of Transhumanism,« is available in Manzocco, Transhumanism, 61–67. Transhumanist leaders are featured in The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, ed. Max More and Natasha Vita-More (Malden, MA 2013).
26) Zoltan Istvan, the author of the transhumanist novel, The Transhuman-ist Wager, ran in the last two presidential elections as well as in the most recent election for the governor of California. He campaigned by driving the »Immortality Bus« throughout the country. R. U. Sirius (born Ken Goffman), a journalist, talk-show host, musician, and editor-in-chief of the magazine »Mondo 2000« (1989–1993), »Axcess Magazine« (1998), »GettingIt.com« (1999–2000) and »H+ Maga-zine« (2008–2010), was a candidate in the US presidential election for the Revolution Party in 2000 on a platform that combined libertarianism and liberalism.
27) See Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, »Technologizing Transcendence: A Critique of Transhumanism,« in Religion and Human Enhancement: Death, Values, and Morality, ed. Tracy J. Trothen and Calvin Mercer (New York 2017), 267–283, quote on p. 269.
28) See Patrick D. Hopkins, »Transcending the Animal: How Transhumanism and Religion Are and Are Not Alike,« The Journal of Evolution and Technology 14 (2) (2005), 13–28. In a study among the readers of IEET, the major transhuman-ist website, 70.66 % identified themselves as either atheist (59.88 %) or agnostic (10.78 %). The remaining 29.34 % religionists are divided among Christians (10.78 %), Buddhist (3.59 %), Muslim (3.59 %) Cosmist (1.8 %), Jewish (1.2 %) and Mormon (1.2 %) An additional 7.19 % reported that they adhere to other belief systems (e. g., Pan-Psychism or Raelism among them).
29) Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, »Transhumanist as a Secularist Faith,« Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 47 (4) (2012), 710–734, quote on p. 731. Whether or not transhumanism is a »secular faith« or a »secular religion« depends on the definitions of these laden terms, but transhumanism undoubtedly calls on human-ity to transcend its biological condition by means of technoscience. See Patrick D. Hopkins, »Transcending the Animal: How Transhumanism and Religion Are and Are Not Alike,« The Journal of Evolution and Technology 14 (2) (2005), 13–28. Some people refer to transhumanism as »alternative religion,« and classify it among other New Religious Movements (NRM).
30) Roberto Manzocco, Transhumanism: Engineering the Human Condition, 32.
31) See Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, »Utopianism and Eschatology: Judaism Engages Transhumanism,« in Religion and Transhumanism: The Unknown Future of Human Enhancement, ed. Calvin Mercer and Tracy J. Trothen (Santa Barbara, CA 2015), 161–180.
32) Julian Huxley, »The Humanist Frame,« in Evolutionary Humanism, 79.
33) Julian Huxley, »Eugenics in Evolutionary Perspective,« in Evolutionary Humanism, 287.
34) Nick Bostrom, »Transhumanism FAQ: A General Introduction, Version 2.0« (2003), www.nickbostrom.com.
35) Nick Bostrom, ibid.
36) Gregory Stock, Metaman: The Making of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism (New York 1993), introduction; cf., Redesigning Humans: Choosing Our Genes, Changing Our Futures (Boston and New York 2003).
37) For an extensive consideration of this trope from a Christian perspective see Ted Peters, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom, 2nd ed. (New York 2003 [1997]).
38) Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler, From Chance to Choice (Cambridge 2000). See also Bert Gordijn and Ruth Chadwick (eds.), Medical Enhancement and Post Humanity (Amsterdam 2008).
39) I owe this phrase to Levi Checketts, »Homo Gubernator: A Moral Anthropology for New Technologies,« Ph. D. Dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley CA, 2018.
40) Michael S. Burdet, »The Religion of Technology: Transhumanism and the Myth of Progress,« in Religion and Transhumanism: The Unknown Future of Human Enhancement, ed. Calvin Mercer and Tracy J. Trothen (Santa Barbara, CA 2015), 132. The essay is based on his earlier study cited above.
41) Michael S. Burdet, Eschatology and the Technological Future, 135.
42) For arguments in favor of human enhancement consult Nicholas Agar, Liberal Eugenics: In Defense of Human Enhancement (Oxford 2004); John Harris, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (Princeton, NJ 2007). Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu (eds.), Human Enhancement (Oxford 2009), provides an overview of the debate about human enhancement. A short summary is offered in Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, »Introduction: Human Enhancement Ethics: The State of the Debate,« ibid., 1–22.
43) See Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (New York 2002); Leon Kass, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (San Francisco 2002); Michael J. Sandel, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge, MA 2007). Overviews of the key disputed issues are available in Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie (eds.), H+: Transhumanism and Its Critics (Philadelphia 2011); Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics, ed. Arvin Gouw, Brian Green and Ted Peters (Lanham, MD, forthcoming).
44) Michael Morrison and Stevieanna de Saille, »CRISPR in Context: Toward a Socially Responsible Debate on Embryo Editing,« Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Communications 5, Article number 110 (September 2019) http://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0315-5.
45) Ronald Bailey, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution (Amherst, NY 2005), is a good example of the dismissive attitude characteristic of techno-enthusiasts. Echoing »liberation theology,« the title intends to dismiss theology as a path for »liberation;« only technology could liberate humanity from its shackles of biology and ignorance.
46) Ted Chu, Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential: A Cosmic Vision for Our Future Evolution (San Rafael, CA 2014), 32.
47) For a philosophic critique of the transhumanist project see Michael Hauskeller, Better Humans? Understanding the Enhancement Project (London and New York 2013).
48) This definition of morphological freedom is taken from »The Transhumanist Declaration (2012),« in The Transhumanist Reader, 54–55, quote on p. 55. A good discussion of morphological freedom is available in Jacob Shatzer, Transhumanism and the Image of God (Downers Grove, IL 2019), 55–72.
49) See Andy Clark, »Reinventing Ourselves: The Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing, and Mind,« in The Transhumanist Reader, 113–127.
50) David Pearce, »The Hedonistic Imperative« available on http://www.hedweb.com.
51) Anders Sandberg, »Morphological Freedom, Why We Not Just Want It, but Need It,« talk given in Berlin on 2001, available in Anarcho-Transhumanism: A Journal of Radical Possibilities and Striving, http://anarchostranshuma. org/post/117749304562/morphological-freedom-why-we. Reprinted in The Transhumanist Reader, 58–64.
52) The most elaborate philosophical argument for pharmacological enhancement is offered in Mark Walker, Happy-People-Pill for All (Malden, MA 2021), the citation is on p.12.
53) This line of thinking is evident in See also George Dvorsky and James Hughes, »Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary,« IEET Monograph Series, 2008, available at http://ieet.org.archive/IEET-03-PostGender.pdf.
54) Martine Rothblatt, »Mind is Deeper than Matter: Transgenderism, Transhumanism and the Freedom of Form,« in The Transhumanist Reader, 318. Since Rothblatt privileges mind over matter, it is only logical that she celebrates »life« in cyberspace. See Martine Rothblatt, Virtually Human: The Promise – and the Peril – of Digital Immortality (New York 2014).
55) Mohammad Yaqub Chaudhary, »Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence and the Re-Enchantment of the World,« Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 54 (2) (2019): 454–478, citation on p. 460.
56) See Michael Saler, As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Pre-History of Virtual Reality (Oxford 2012).
57) Chaudhary, »Augmented Reality,« 461.
58) For close analysis of the sacralization of cyberspace see Robert M. Geraci, Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life (Oxford 2014). See also Robert M. Geraci, Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality (Oxford 2010).
59) The attitude is most evident in Nick Bostrom’s »The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant,« Journal of Medical Ethics 31 (205), 273–77. This failed attempt to express transhumanist themes in fiction is not a coincidence; the shallowness of transhumanism prevents them from generating good literature. The point is elaborated in Christina Bieber Lake, »The Failed Fictions of Transhumanism,« in Christian Perspectives on Transhumanism and the Church: Chips in the Brain, Immortality, and the World of Tomorrow, ed. Steve Donaldson and Ron Cole-Turner (New York 2018), 137–149.
60) Aubrey De Grey, »The Curate’s Egg of Anti-Aging Bioethics,« in The Transhumanist Reader, 215.
61) Sacha Dick and Andreas Frewer, »Life Extension: Eternal Debates on Immortality,« in: Post-and Transhumanism: An Introduction, ed. Robert Ranisch and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (Frankfurt a. M. 2014), quote on p. 120.
62) Aubrey De Grey, »Radical Life Extension: Technological Aspects,« in: Religion and the Implication of Radical Life Extension, ed. Derek F. Maher and Calvin Mercer (New York 2009), 13–24; for detailed exposition of his strategies for perpetual postponement of death, namely, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), see Aubrey De Grey, Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthrough That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime (New York 2007). De Grey’s longevity research is supported by the Methuselah Foundation, funded by the tech entrepreneur, Peter Thiel.
63) Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, TRANSCEND: Nine Steps to Living Forever (New York 2010).
64) Kevin Kelly, »Nerd Theology,« Technology in Society 21 (4) (1999), 391.
65) Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, TRANSCEND, 404.
66) Fazael R. Rana with Kenneth R. Samples, Humans 2.0: Scientific, Philo-sophical and Theological Perspectives on Transhumanism (Covina, CA 2019), 75. It is intriguing to compare this book to Peter Nowak, Humans 3.0: The Upgrading of the Species (Guilford, CT 2015).
67) Rana, Humans 2.0, ibid.
68) A typical example is Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future (New York 2016).
69) For detailed explanation of the process by which minds are going to be uploaded onto computers see Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Path, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford 2016). Also useful is Shatzer’s discussion of mind uploading in Transhumanism and the Image of God, 90–109.
70) Robert M. Geraci, »Apocalyptic AI: Religion and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence,« Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76 (1) (2008), 138–166, quote on p. 149.
71) Christopher John Müller, Prometheanism: Technology, Digital Culture and Human Obsolescence (Lanham, MD 2016).
72) Ben Saunders, Do The Gods Wear Capes?: Spirituality, Fantasy and Superheroes (New York 2011), 106.
73) Investing technology with the aura of the sublime predated transhumanism. See David E. Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MA 1996); David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York 1997).
74) Arranged chronologically, key anthologies on religion and transhumanism include: Derek F. Maher and Calvin Mercer (eds.), Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension (New York 2009); Ronald Cole-Turner (ed.), Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in the Age of Technological Enhancement (Washington, DC 2011); Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Kenneth L. Mossman (eds.), Building Better Humans? Refocusing the Debate on Transhumanism (Frankfurt a. M. 2012); Calvin Mercer and Derek F. Maher (eds.), Transhumanism and the Body: The World Religions Speak (New York 2014); Calvin Mercer and Tracy J. Trothen, Religion and Transhumanism: The Unknown Futures of Human Enhancement (Santa Barbara, CA 2015); Tracy J. Trothen and Calvin Mercer (eds.), Religion and Human Enhancement: Death, Values and Morality (New York 2017); Steve Donaldson and Ronald Cole-Turner (eds.), Christian Perspectives on Transhumanism and the Church: Chips in the Brain, Immortality, and the World of Tomorrow (New York 2018). Relevant monographs include: Albert Borgmann, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology (Grand Rapids, MI 2003); Brent Waters, From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a Postmodern World (Farnham et al. 2013); Brent Waters, Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture: From Posthuman Back to the Human (Milton Park et al. 2014); Craig M. Gay, Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal (Downers Grove, IL 2018); Jacob Shatzer, Transhumanism and the Image of God: Today’s Technology and the Future of Christian Discipleship (Downers Grove, IL 2019).
75) In this regard, transhumanism reflects the secularization of Christianity. See Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, »Utopianism and Eschatology: Judaism Engages Transhumanism,«: in Religion and Transhumanism, 161–180; Norbert Samuelson and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, »Jewish Perspectives on Transhumanism,« in Building Better Humans?, 105–132;
76) Although I speak from a Judaic perspective, my critique has much in common with the views of Christian theologians who are critical of transhumanism. For example, See Thorston Moos, »Reduced Heritage: How Transhumanism Secularizes and Desecularizes Religious Visions,« in: Perfecting Human Futures: Transhuman Visions and Technological Imaginations, ed. J. Benjamin Hurlbut and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Wiesbaden 2016), 159–178. See also the works of Brent Waters cited above.
77) The founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have bonded so closely that they are referred to as collectively as »LarryandSergey.«
78) I owe the term to Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes our Spiritual and Social Lives (Grand Rapid, MI 2013).
79) On Bacon’s critique of »idols« see Burdet, Eschatology and the Tech-nol-ogical Future, 12–18.
80) Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry (Cambridge, MA 1992), 1.
81) G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (Downers Grove, IL 2008), 19.
82) Halbertal and Margalit, Idolatry, 39.
83) Beale, We Become What We Worship, 21; A similar position is articulated by Edward P. Meadors, Idolatry and the Hardening of the Heart (New York 2006).
84) Halbertal and Margalit, Idolatry, 39.
85) Halbertal and Margalit, ibid., 40.
86) Richard Lintz, Identity and Idolatry: The Image of God and Its Inversion (Downers Grove, IL 2015), 39.
87) Lintz, ibid., 42.
88) Lintz, ibid., 60.
89) Rabbinic Midrash, the Hekhalot and Merkabah mysticism, the liturgy, and the preoccupation in magic and astrology all testify to the challenging nature of biblical aniconism.
90) Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed I:2, III: 29; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry, 1, 1–2.
91) The best exposition of Maimonides’ defense of radical transcendence and demythologization of Judaism is Kenneth Seeskin, No Other Gods: The Modern Struggle against Idolatry (Millburn, NJ 1995); idem, Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides (New York 1999).
92) Giulio Prisco, »Transcendent Engineering,« in: The Transhumanist Read-er, 235. For an earlier version of this essay see Giulio Prisco, »Engineering Transcendence,« published by Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (2006). Prisco is a proponent of cryonics and he admits, »I do not accept that I will die.« He holds that »someday science may develop the capability to resurrect the dead,« and believes that this will happen »in a few hundred years.«
93) Prisco, ibid., 234.
94) Prisco, ibid.
95) On the Russian Cosmists see Burdet, Eschatology and the Technological Future, 18–24; on Teilhard de Chardin, see Burdet, ibid., 113–140.
96) See Robert M. Geraci, Apocalyptic AI, 86. We should note that the other co-founder of the Order of Cosmic Engineers is William Sims Bainbridge, the soci-ologist of religion and transhumanist who has wielded enormous influenced in the National Science Foundation. His endorsement of transhumanist futuristic fantasies (especially related to space colonization) have inspired many scientific projects, particularly ones funded by DARPA, the agency whose projects enhance American soldiers.
97) Second life is a multiplayer, three-dimensional, online role-playing virtual community in which »residents« create virtual representations of them-selves (i. e., avatars) and interact with other avatars, places and objects.
98) See Barry G. Ritchie, »The (Un)likelihood of a High-Tech Path to Im-mortality,« in Building Better Humans?, 357–378; Willian J. Grassie, »Is Trans-human-ism Scientifically Plausible? Posthuman Predictions and the Human Predicament,« in Building Better Humans?, 465–484.
99) Critiques of the deleterious social impact of digital technologies abound. See Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York 1992); Nicholas Carr, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (New York 2010); Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York 2011); Martin Ford, Rise of Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (New York 2015); Michael Harris, The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection (New York 2014); Susan Greenfield, Mind Change: How Digital Technologies Are Leaving Their Marks on Our Brains (New York 2015); Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (New York 2017).
100) Shoshana Zuboff, Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the Frontier of Power (New York 2018), especially 3–193.
101) See »Hating in the Global Village,« in: Virtual Morality: Morals, Ethics, and New Media, ed. Mark J. P. Wolf (New York 2003), 135–154. Since this book was published the situation has deteriorated considerably, especially in the last four years.
102) Jamie Condliffe, »Mark Zuckerberg Has Laid Out His Vision of a World United by Facebook,« MIT Technology Review (February 2017).
103) See Andrew Marantz, »The Dark Side of Techno-Utopianism,« The New Yorker (September 23, 2019); Charlie Warzel, »Facebook Is Too Big for Democracy,« The New York Times (September 5, 2020).
104) The scandal of Cambridge Analytica, the British political consulting firm that combined misappropriation of digital assets, data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication during electoral processes in the US and Britain illustrates the political damage wrought by technologies in the hands of malicious humans.
105) See Franklin Foer, »Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan,« The Atlantic (November 2019 Issue).
106) Detweiler, iGods, 87.
107) D. Berry and A. Fagerjord, Digital Humanities (London 2017), 35.
108) Ibid.
109) Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, »In Praise of Human Dignity: The Humanities in the Age of Big Data,« On Education: Journal of Research and Debate, Special Issue on »Human, All Too Human?« Transhumanism, Posthumanism and the »End of Education.« 1 (2) (2018), available at: https://doi.org/10.17899/on_ ed.2018.2.4.
110) Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search for an Ethics in the Technological Age (Chicago, IL 1984), 18; for exposition of Jonas’s views see Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, »Utopianism and Eschatology: Judaism Engages Transhumanism,« esp. 170–174; Christian Wiese, »God’s Passion for Humankind and Human Responsibility for the Divine: Anthropology and Ethics in Hans Jonas’s and Abraham J. Heschel’s Post-Holocaust Interpretation of Imago Dei,« in: Ethics of In-Visibility: Imago Dei, Memory, and Human Dignity in Jewish and Christian Thought, ed. Claudia Welz (Tübingen 2015), 195–234.
111) No one understands that obsession and addiction better than Jaron Lanier, the computer scientist and pioneer of virtual reality technology. See Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget (New York 2010); idem, Ten Arguments for De-leting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (New York 2018).