Biotechnology

This essay argues that the human form is not final: : natural selection continues within a second-order natural environment, technogenic in nature, which the spe-cies itself fabricates. Understanding “form” as an integrated configuration (body, cognitive and relational dispositions, technical-symbolic couplings), it shows how the displacement of risk from early mortality to effective reproductive fitness re-parameterises evolution. In the technogenic niche, informational mediation of encounter (metric proximity, catalogue–algorithmic hierarchisation–filter) favours assortativity and quantile pairing; functional externalisation redistributes cognitive costs; and mental health (...) operates as a selective channel, from extreme cut to chronic friction that delays parenthood. A verification programme is proposed with comparable indicators (childlessness, age at first child, assortativity coefficients, prevalences of sexual inactivity), defending that data operate as philosophical oper-ators that make capillary selection measurable. The conclusion is that, by reconfig-uring the environment, we reconfigure the pressures that shape us: the evolutionary future of the human is the multigenerational resultant of the ecologies we construct. (shrink)

Advanced biopreservation technologies using subzero approaches such as supercooling, partial freezing, and vitrification with reanimating techniques including nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming are rapidly emerging as technologies with potential to radically disrupt biomedicine, research, aquaculture, and conservation. These technologies could pause biological time and facilitate large-scale banking of biomedical products including organs, tissues, and cell therapies.

_The first authoritative and comprehensive survey of the origins and current state of transhumanist thinking_ The rapid pace of emerging technologies is playing an increasingly important role in overcoming fundamental human limitations. Featuring core writings by seminal thinkers in the speculative possibilities of the posthuman condition, essays address key philosophical arguments for and against human enhancement, explore the inevitability of life extension, and consider possible solutions to the growing issues of social and ethical implications and concerns. Edited by the internationally (...) acclaimed founders of the philosophy and social movement of transhumanism, _The Transhumanist Reader_ is an indispensable guide to our current state of knowledge of the quest to expand the frontiers of human nature. (shrink)