Transhumanity, the way forward?

[Lorizael]

The definition of what human nature is, or what it means to be human, it ultimately not a precise one with a clearly delineated line between human and not. We can definitely point to or imagine specific cases that would be on one side or the other of a boundary, but the middle will always be a mush. What that means is while nothing or very little we do today counts as "transhuman," many of the things we do today look like precursors to the kinds of enhancements or interventions we'd expect of honest to god transhumanism.

That's the point I'm trying to make about how we're not going to choose or not choose transhumanity. Simply continuing to make the kinds of everyday choices we do right now will eventually take us, incrementally, toward a transhuman future. There won't be a hard and fast line we cross where we're no longer human, because our conception of what human is changes over time. Eventually, though, we will be far removed from what we now think of as human or what our ancestors thought. But when it happens, it will just be one more tiny change we make and won't seem like that big of a deal.

[Elok]

You can argue that some of the steps we've taken are crucial first steps to transhumanism in that we couldn't have cybernetic enhancement without first developing prostheses, etc.  But it doesn't follow that these will necessarily lead to something transhuman, when in fact they were undertaken for the exact opposite reason, to bring a disfigured or ailing individual back in line with the human norm.  As for cell phones, we've radically changed the way we process and store information before.  The changes wrought by cell phones aren't all that dramatic compared to the changes wrought by the development of handwriting, or the printing press, or computers in general.  We still readily recognize the aboriginal in the jungle, who might not even know what writing is, as being of the same species.