But I Have Promises to Keep...

I promised George a longer reply than just "no" on my objections to the video link on science and Buddhism that he posted earlier today. The reply is now up at my site: Keeping an Open Mind is a Virtue, but not so Open that Your Brains Fall Out. Here is the first paragraph, to whet your appetites, your knives, or both:

Alan Sokal was a teaching assistant in my quantum mechanics (QM) course. I still recall vividly the day he came with a graph showing the spike of the first-ever observed strange particle. I remember, too, the playful twinkle in his eye. Thirteen years ago, Alan (at this point a physics professor at NYU) submitted a paper to the prominent cultural studies journal Social Text, titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”.

Athena
Starship Reckless
On Being Bitten to Death by Ducks

Interpretive Dance of the Transhumanist Future

The following article was written by Natasha Vita-More in response to Athena Andreadis’ article, "If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!"

“Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?” (Nietzsche)

It is a breezy summer evening, as I sip a glass of wine after tending to the garden, romping in play with my dog, meditation, exercise, and finally engaging in the lusciousness of flirting with my husband, I am alone at last in my study.

How ironic it is that Athena Andreadis views transhumanism as “… deeply anhedonic, hostile to physicality and the pleasures of the body, from enjoying wine to playing in an orchestra …” in her article “If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!” posted on on the Sentient Developments blog.

This response to Andreadis’ article is a well-intended and heart-felt defense of transhumanism in its appreciation and concern for human body and its activism toward human enhancement.

In that we are human with a biology, it makes sense to be biologically healthy, largely because transhumanism is, and always has been, closely linked to the field of life extension. With this said, it is true that transhumanism is more widely known for its vision of a posthuman future—the technological singularity, superintelligences, uploading, distributed existence, etc. Transhumanism is also known for its critical thinking about the future—including human rights, the Proactionary Principle, overcoming bias, environmental and ecological issues, techno-democracy, friendly AI, etc. Nonetheless, I wonder why there is less public attention directed toward the vitality and intelligence behind transhumanists’ emphasis on health and well-being. If one were to scan the most recent publications, topics on health and fitness seem to be missing. It was not always this way.

(Yacov Sharir)

Transhumanism Health & Body

“Flex the mind, flex the body” at one time (probably around 1997) was one of many transhumanist mottos. We were devoted to regenerative medicine and thought that if a person were physically fit, intellectually disciplined, and spiritually alert; we would be practicing a type of “Zen in the art of superlongevity.” Like Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), we tried to encapsulate a perception of the world that embraces the rationale and the dream. As an underlying tenet of transhumanism—health and well-being as logical and as an ideal are indispensable. How could it be otherwise?

Two well-known computer scientists, Ben Goertzel and Peter Voss, agreed. In 1996, Voss writes: “It [extropy/transhumanism] comprises long term physical and emotional health, fulfillment, and happiness; not wasting our lives on irrelevant or unpleasant tasks.” Over ten years later in 2008, Goertzel states: “… the Extropian Ubermensch ‘will exude benevolence, emanating its excess of health and self-confidence.’

Unlike Andreadis’ view that transhumanists harbor disdain for the human body, in the mid-1990s transhumanists were criticized for being too body conscious—too focused on health—too physical, too sexy: Let me gently poke a little fun at ourselves by quoting some journalistic comments:

“… even as a youth, More sought longevity, starting a vitamin regimen at age 11; at 15, he started meditating and lifting weights …”(Icon Magazine 1998)

“Certainly Max looks fit … he has just been through an extensive program of physiological testing at the Kronos Clinic …. Both are muscular and voluptuous, Natasha’s body certainly makes an impressive advertisement for longevity.” (LA Weekly 2001)

“So journalists played up the looniness of their ideas … Max and Natasha’s body building, supplements, antiaging routines.” (Rapture 2003)

“Vita More bodybuilding guru …”(Wired 1997)

“Natasha’s case age seems to have become blurred, confused, to some extent even vanquished.” (LA Weekly 2001)

“... superhuman object of desire …” (The Atlantic 1998)

We did not ask to be reflected with admiration, exaggeration, or disdain. We, like many transhumanists, simply enjoy working out. Of course we also want to enhance our minds and bodies to extend our lives.

What could be more valuable for superlongevity than knowing about what our bodies need to be healthy? Nothing, at least for the time being, later we will have other issues to contend with—in a posthuman world. We can hypothesize about it all we want, but the game is all about staying alive. It always has been about survival.

In 2000 I presented a paper at Longevity Bootcamp, sponsored by the Maximum Life Foundation, a transhumanist organization. The paper revealed The American Council on Exercise (ACE) report from the Surgeon General’s office, which stated that: 60% of American adults exercise only once in a while; 25% never exercise; six out of ten resort to medications to feel better; one-third are overweight; 14% suffer from depression; and two out of five will die of heart disease. In a call for awareness, my paper set out to suggest that by 2050 there will be one million people over 100 years old, a notable increase from the 40,000 centurions alive in 1998. This longevity is even more striking when compared to the normal life expectancy at the turn of the last century (1900s)—which was just 49. Further the paper presented a forecast that of those who are 65 then: 75% will reach 80; 60% will reach 85; 41% will reach 90; 3% will reach 100 and 2% will reach 105.

Transhumanism, in its socio-political understanding of the baby boomer generation approaching an old age and the health needs for such a growing segment of the world’s population, actually was and continues to be realistic about the need for public awareness of health and fitness.

At the inception of the modern philosophy transhuman members of Extropy Institute, and later some members of WTA, were highly proactive about health and fitness.

Roy Walford’s books Maximum Life Span and Beyond the 120 Year Diet were required reading for many transhumanists. But it was not just Dr. Walford’s books that were inspiring, Roy, until he could no longer exercise, worked out at World Gym in Venice, was a unique combination of scientist and artist—his home exhibited images of bodies engaged in dance, yoga and sex alongside scientific research. Chris Heward, formerly Chief Scientist at Kronos Lab in Scottsdale Arizona, was a long-time health enthusiast as well, especially the Gracie style of Jiu-Jitsu.

There are a number of transhumanist writings on pro-body exercise, fitness and sexual freedom. Martine Rothblatt’s The Apartheid of Sex not only discusses the freedom of gender, she also provides a source of knowledge about our sexuality. Ray Kurzweil’s Fantastic Voyage provides a health consciousness and valuable source of information nutrition and supplements. One on One Fitness, which I co-wrote with Leigh Christian, my collage as a personal trainer and sports nutritionist, is a personalized exercise and nutrition routine.

Yet, it almost frightens me that I would have to resort to naming those who are athletic, but I feel I need in stressing the reality of transhumanism and enjoyment of exercise, sports, and dance.

Speaking of dance, and in reflection for a moment—it was so many years ago that I did dance with the Birmingham Dance ensemble in the Opera Tannhäuser. I was not really very disciplined and favored an interpretive movement—like dancing to the sunrise at the rim of Haleakala, dancing in harmony with the waves in the South Atlantic Ocean or to the desert-blown sands of Monument valley. I have never stopped dancing, it simply has taken on different rhythms and steps. And we need to dance with our ideas, words and pen—which transhumanists do take seriously.

Cyborg vs. Transhuman

Perhaps here is a point in my thinking that needs to be acknowledge—the different rhythms and steps of human evolution and bodily enhancement. We might discuss the issue of the transhuman vs. the cyborg. Even though most authors and academics have not carefully addressed the distinctions between the two, there is a clear distinction between the “cyborg” and the “transhuman”. Simply put, the cyborg is a cybernetic machine-man. The transhuman is a transitional stage of transformation of human enhancement. Cyborg = a fixed semi-mental cybernetic being with no destination; transhuman = an unfixed semi-bio enhanced being actively extending life and evolving. But perhaps I am incorrect here. James Hughes’ Citizen Cyborg and his writings on the notion of a “cyborg Buddha” may contradict me. Nonetheless, I believe we are in sync of the transhumanist vision of neurological enhancement, be it cyborg or transhuman.

Addressing Athena

For over twenty years, my practice and theory, while transdisciplinary in scope, have been located precisely and resolutely within the field of transhumanism. I have tried my best to listen to and understand the different flavors of transhumanism and to identity the rhizome growth of interconnected interests and beliefs, which push and pull transhumanism in varied directions. Nonetheless, rooted firmly in the philosophy of transhumanism, the idea of well-being in body and mind is, and continues to be, essential to the core of transhumanism. Whether or not specific individuals who call themselves transhuman or transhumanist represent this understanding is their choice. Yet, if not, they are not responsive to the fullness of the philosophy.

The fact that journalists often select images for their publications which are more cyborg-terminator in scope than transhuman, and therefore often lacking in sensuality, warmth, wellness, and well—lovely, ought to be taken seriously. Even if asked to, why would a journalist generally represent a transhumanism as happy, loving, and nurturing? Journalists and their editors will do as they please to sell their publication, and that visual is often dystopic and fearful. One bad image equals a thousand copies of that same bad image. The same circumstance applies to quotes taken out of context in interviews, articles and essays, and even academic papers.

Alas, I agree with Andreadis in that I do not want to go into the future without being able to move to the music. I would like to address specific claims that Andreadis makes:

Andreadis writes: “Their words contain little color or sound, few scents, hardly any plants or animals. Food and sex come as pills, electric stimuli or IV drips; almost all arts and any sciences not related to individual enhancement have atrophied, along with most human activities that don’t involve VR.”

Rather than taking this claim apart statement by statement, which I could do, I would rather focus in on one particular issue—that “almost all arts and any sciences not related to individual enhancement has atrophied …”

Looking into transhumanist arts and sciences, I can easily identify numerous examples of vibrant color and evoking sounds. The Exemplar collection of visuals, notably “DNA Breakout”, is a prime example of rich colors depicting a transhumanist future. The piece “Walkabout”, which takes place in a rose garden and microscopically it draws parallels between molecular infestation of microbes, but the visuals of the entire project is encompassed soft pinks and brilliant orange colors, and “The Aesthetics of Memetic Evolution”, graphical narrative animation, etc.

Walkabout

While some of these examples do pertain to human enhancement in one form or another, transhumanism is not so limited in its visual scope. Media arts involve the mediums of visual art of sculpture, graphic arts, filmmaking, videography, and interactive gaming, installations, immersive design, dance and theatre, for example. The storylines are not exclusive to science fiction, but even if there were—they revolved around all our human emotions, no matter the biology or synthetic form.

Andreadis further claims, “If a body is tolerated at all, the ideal is a mixture of metal and ceramic ….” Fair enough. Many images do depict a modern, streamlined figure. However some do not. The dvd “Bone Density” shows a transhumanist form which is covered with hair follicles and there is no sign of metal or ceramic particles.

Aesthetics of an Enhanced Existence

It is not that the times have changed for transhsumanism, it is that now the medicine, science and technology that we dared to dream about many years ago are actualizing. The idea of human enhancement is here.

The acronym NBIC has become fairly mainstream. Does that mean that we will be cyborgized terminators of a Noosphere’s conglomerate mindthink? No. It does not. It means that we will continue expanding our human, biological senses to further explore and interact with the universe around us. Whatever shape or form emerges will be more than a machine with wires—it will be the creation of the new interpretations of the visions of Leonardo, Matisse, Chanel, Versace, and whose media will emerge from the nano-bio-info-cogno and become more—an evolving NBIC+. Critics ought not to be so stern in nature and attitude to assume that the artists, designers and engineers of our future selves will be limited by the 20th century sketches of a cyborg future. We must have a little respect for the creative multi-media and transdisciplinary fields that will emerge as the medicine, science and technologies advance.

No matter the bodily or substrate style, sensorial pleasures are aesthetic characteristics relative to a posthuman future. Aesthetics of radically enhanced existence seeks to elucidate both the nature of experience itself, and the essential moments of our multi-selves’ perceptions of experience.

Umberto Eco asked,“is beauty something ontologically self-subsistent, which gives pleasure when it is apprehended? Or is it rather the case that a thing appears beautiful only when someone apprehends it in such a way as to experience a certain type of pleasure?” Beauty can be one, the other, or both ways—taking it into state of multiplicity. The idea that historically theories had to be located in one field, one argument, one result changes to the proactive prospect that it is not an either or scenario, but an array of possibilities that removes the tension of contradictions.

Works of art which will help determine our future also affect our perceptions and how we build forms, environments within which to exist. No doubt this will affect our values which govern our own sense of life, dignity and social circumstances. They also invite art works which will engage the enhanced existence media for semi/non-bio bodies, and further sustain our sense of style.

Transhumanist Intelligence

Andreadis further claims that “It’s a transhumanist article of faith that intelligence can and must be augmented – but there are many kinds of intelligences.” Here I pause. First, it is true that transhumanist support the idea of augmenting intelligence, as a fact, not an article of faith. Second, transhumanists are fully aware of the different types of intelligence. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ has been on the transhumanist reading lists since for over a decade, along with Flow Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. My own paper “Ageless Thinking” presented at the Resources for Independent Thinking in 1996 discusses intelligence, the body and sexuality, and which proposes a very different view of transhumanist body and attitudes than what Andreadis suggests in her article.

Like Andreadis, I too believe that our bodies can be improved. Where we obviously differ is Andreadis’ belief that the carbon body is essential to be empathic and loving. My thinking is that we do not have to be sequestered to one body, be it carbon/biological or otherwise. Why limit our choices? It is true that today many humans do not exist in one bodily form. Many co-reside in virtual habitats in avatars. While this venue is currently anything but seamless, the odds that the alternatives for co-existing in multiple bodies in multiple environments is more than high.

I thank Athena Andreadis for her honest appraisal and provoking article, which represents what many others assume to be a characterization of transhumanism. Nonetheless, it has never been my own, nor the vision of those I know and have worked with for decades and with whom I pioneered the cultural/social movement of transhumanism. The dance of improvisation: requires skill, diversity, flexibility and stamina—much like life itself.

“Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.” (Martha Graham)

“The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people
is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.” (Emma Goldman)

(Elif Ayiter)

---

Natasha Vita-More is a fellow of the IEET, a media designer and futurist.

Dreamers of a Better Future, Unite!

Athena Andreadis is guest-blogging this month. A slightly different version of this essay appeared in her blog on March 13, 2008.

"Mobilis in Mobile": Ellen Ripley/Alien Queen hybrid (Alien Resurrection)

Views of space travel have grown increasingly pessimistic in the last decade. This is not surprising: SETI still has received no unambiguous requests for more Chuck Berry from its listening posts, NASA is busy re-inventing flywheels and citizens even of first-world countries feel beleaguered in a world that seems increasingly hostile to any but the extraordinarily privileged. Always a weathervane of the present, speculative fiction has been gazing more and more inwardly -- either to a hazy gold-tinted past (fantasy, both literally and metaphorically) or to a smoggy rust-colored earthbound future (cyberpunk).

The philosophically inclined are slightly more optimistic. Transhumanists, the new utopians, extol the pleasures of a future when our bodies, particularly our brains/minds, will be optimized (or at least not mind that they're not optimized) by a combination of bioengineering, neurocognitive manipulation, nanotech and AI. Most transhumanists, especially those with a socially progressive agenda, are as decisively earthbound as cyberpunk authors. They consider space exploration a misguided waste of resources, a potentially dangerous distraction from here-and-now problems -- ecological collapse, inequality and poverty, incurable diseases among which transhumanists routinely count aging, not to mention variants of gray goo.

And yet, despite the uncoolness of space exploration, despite NASA's disastrous holding pattern, there are those of us who still stubbornly dream of going to the stars. We are not starry-eyed romantics. We recognize that the problems associated with spacefaring are formidable (as examined briefly in Making Aliens 1, 2 and 3). But I, at least, think that improving circumstances on earth and exploring space are not mutually exclusive, either philosophically or -- perhaps just as importantly -- financially. In fact, I consider this a false dilemma. I believe that both sides have a much greater likelihood to implement their plans if they coordinate their efforts, for a very simple reason: the attributes required for successful space exploration are also primary goals of transhumanism.

Consider the ingredients that would make an ideal crewmember of a space expedition: robust physical and mental health, biological and psychological adaptability, longevity, ability to interphase directly with components of the ship. In short, enhancements and augmentations eventually resulting in self-repairing quasi-immortals with extended senses and capabilities -- the loose working definition of transhuman.

Coordination of the two movements would give a real, concrete purpose to transhumanism beyond the uncompelling objective of giving everyone a semi-infinite life of leisure (without guarantees that either terrestrial resources or the human mental and social framework could accommodate such a shift). It would also turn the journey to the stars into a more hopeful proposition, since it might make it possible that those who started the journey could live to see planetfall.

Whereas spacefaring enthusiasts acknowledge the enormity of the undertaking they propose, most transhumanists take it as an article of faith that their ideas will be realized soon, though the goalposts keep receding into the future. As more soundbite than proof they invoke Moore's exponential law, equating stodgy silicon with complex, contrary carbon. However, despite such confident optimism, enhancements will be hellishly difficult to implement. This stems from a fundamental that cannot be short-circuited or evaded: no matter how many experiments are performed on mice or even primates, humans have enough unique characteristics that optimization will require people.

Contrary to the usual supposition that the rich will be the first to cross the transhuman threshold, it is virtually certain that the frontline will consist of the desperate and the disenfranchised: the terminally ill, the poor, prisoners and soldiers -- the same people who now try new chemotherapy or immunosuppression drugs, donate ova, become surrogate mothers, "agree" to undergo chemical castration or sleep deprivation. Yet another pool of early starfarers will be those whose beliefs require isolation to practice, whether they be Raëlians or fundamentalist monotheists -- just as the Puritans had to brave the wilderness and brutal winters of Massachusetts to set up their Shining (though inevitably tarnished) City on the Hill.

So the first generation of humans adjusted to starship living are far likelier to resemble Peter Watts' marginalized Rifters or Jay Lake's rabid Armoricans, rather than the universe-striding, empowered citizens of Iain Banks' Culture. Such methods and outcomes will not reassure anyone, regardless of her/his position on the political spectrum, who considers augmentation hubristic, dehumanizing, or a threat to human identity, equality or morality. The slightly less fraught idea of uploading individuals into (ostensibly) more durable non-carbon frames is not achievable, because minds are inseparable from the neurons that create them. Even if technological advances eventually enable synapse-by synapse reconstructions, the results will be not transfers but copies.

Yet no matter how palatable the methods and outcomes are, it seems to me that changes to humans will be inevitable if we ever want to go beyond the orbit of Pluto within one lifetime. Successful implementation of transhumanist techniques will help overcome the immense distances and inhospitable conditions of the journey. The undertaking will also bring about something that naysayers tend to dread as a danger: speciation. Any significant changes to human physiology (whether genetic or epigenetic) will change the thought/emotion processes of those altered, which will in turn modify their cultural responses, including mating preferences and kinship patterns. Furthermore, long space journeys will recreate isolated breeding pools with divergent technology and social mores (as discussed in Making Aliens 4, 5 and 6).

On earth, all "separate but equal" doctrines have wrought untold misery and injustice, whether those segregated are genders in countries practicing sharia, races in the American or African South, or the underprivileged in any nation that lacks decent health policies, adequate wages and humane laws. Speciation of humanity on earth bids fair to replicate this pattern, with the ancestral species (us) becoming slaves, food, zoo specimens or practice targets to our evolved progeny, Neanderthals to their Cro-Magnons, Eloi to their Morlocks. On the other hand, speciation in space may well be a requirement for success. Generation of variants makes it likelier that at least one of our many future permutations will pass the stringent tests of space travel and alight on another habitable planet.

Despite their honorable intentions and progressive outlook, if the transhumanists insist on first establishing a utopia on earth before approving spacefaring, they will achieve either nothing or a dystopia as bleak as that depicted in Paolo Bacigalupi's unsparing stories. If they join forces with the space enthusiasts, they stand a chance to bring humanity through the Singularity some of them so fervently predict and expect -- except it may be a Plurality of sapiens species and inhabited worlds instead.

Athena

Starship Reckless

Equalizer or Terminator?

Athena Andreadis is guest-blogging this month.

Years ago, I saw a short in an animation festival. It showed earth inhabited by men who happily bopped each other and propagated by laying eggs. A starship crash interrupted the idyll. Presaging Battlestar Galactica, the newcomers proved miraculously interfertile with the men who handed them the job of propagation along with all other disagreeable chores. Things went swimmingly, at least for the men, until a rescue ship arrived. After the women left, the men were once again free to pursue manly things – until they realized they had forgotten how to lay eggs.

The short was a wry, science-fictional version of the animal wife tale. But it's interesting that we can program starships to ricochet from planet to planet and routinely use in vitro fertilization – yet if women want direct genetic descendants, they still have no alternative to pregnancy unless they are rich enough to hire a surrogate, an option burdened with ethical baggage.

Of course, a womb is much more than a warm sac of nutrients. The endocrine inputs alone would tax a medium-size factory, leaving aside those from the immune system. The complexities of its function have made an artificial womb remain a distant glimpse and attempts with mammalian embryos still fail at early stages. Yet cultural politics have been as decisive in this delay as biological challenges: think of the lightning speed with which Japanese officials approved Viagra versus their decades-long ban on oral contraceptives and you get the picture. And the upheaval brought about by contraception will be a mild breeze compared to the hurricane that will be unleashed if we ever succeed in creating an artificial uterus. Its repercussions may equal (and possibly reverse) those that accompanied the invention of agriculture.

Prior to agriculture, gatherer-hunters lived semi-nomadic lives in small groups of relatively flat hierarchies. Family configurations were fluid and quasi-egalitarian and children were few, spaced far apart and collectively raised. This persisted when the nomads first settled. The earliest agricultural communities show little social stratification: there are no ostentatious palaces or tombs. But with the ability to hoard food reserves, dynamics changed – and so did the status of women, now burdened with multiple children and deprived of mobility and the gathering skills and knowledge of their foremothers. Wombs became commodities and have remained so, with minor fluctuations, ever since.

If we succeed in creating functioning artificial wombs, they will remain luxury options (like surrogate motherhood) until/unless they become relatively cheap. At that point, it’s virtually certain that they’ll be heavily used for reasons outlined in many analyses elsewhere – primarily the sparing of both mother and child from the health problems associated with pregnancy and birth (1, 2). And if they’re used, they will have a predictable outcome: all parents will become fathers, biologically, psychologically and, possibly, culturally.

Women will be able to have as many children as men, even multiplets without the severe problems of extreme prematurity now inherent in such a choice. Additionally, women will not undergo the hormonal changes of pregnancy, which means they will be as much (or as little) emotionally invested in their offspring as men. And of course cheap working artificial wombs will also mean that women will become biologically redundant.

Having equally invested parents is standard in other species whose offspring have long periods of helplessness – birds are an obvious “nuclear” example, social insects an “extended” one. Adoptions in humans show that biological connections are not a prerequisite in forming kinship bonds, although adopted and step-children are often treated less well than biological ones.

If we go the friendly route, ending pregnancy may finally usher in true equality between the genders since women will no longer be penalized physically, psychologically, financially and socially for having children: many problems, from autism to bed wetting, will cease being automatically the mother’s responsibility or fault. Such a change may perhaps allow us to play with alternative family arrangements, from Ursula Le Guin’s Ki’O sedoretu to Poul Anderson’s Rogaviki polyandry.

If we go the other route, women could become extinct as soon as a decade after artificial wombs become widely available, except as trophies or zoo specimens. Those who think this is unlikely need only to be reminded that there are now regions of China and India where the ratio of boys to girls is two to one, courtesy of sex-selective abortion and infanticide. People may bemoan a potential world without women, but such pious thoughts didn’t stop us from extinguishing countless other species. Personally, I think that never getting born is preferable to a devalued life.

An all-male culture need not resemble a prison or an army barracks. Nevertheless, I suspect that such a society will have either slavery or indentured service even if it has advanced technology, as humans seem unable to avoid rank demarcations (although their natural ranking system is not the fixed rigid pyramid of canine bands). Their romantic Others may be transgendered men, or Wraeththu-like bishōnen boys in a revival of the erastes/eromenos scheme of Periclean Athens. But like the men in the cartoon short I described earlier, even with artificial wombs these guys will eventually bump into another wall: ovarian stocks.

Like wombs, ova are not passive nurturing chambers. For one, they select which sperm to let in when the hordes come knocking. Additionally, beyond transmitting half the nuclear and all the mitochondrial genes, eggs also contain organized spacetime gradients that direct correct formation and epigenetic imprinting of the embryo. Re-creating this kind of organized cytoplasm makes an artificial womb seem simple by comparison and if there are any trophy women left at that point their fate may be grim.

Wanting to hear another person’s views on this matter, I asked my partner, without any preamble or explanation, “What do you think will happen to women if we create working artificial wombs?” And he, proving yet again how much he deserves the title of snacho, replied without missing a beat, “Nothing. Women are the reason men want to get out of bed in the morning.” I couldn’t help smiling… and I reflected that, as long as even tiny pockets of such people continue to exist, we may get to travel to the stars, after all.


Athena
Starship Reckless

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!

(incorrectly but fittingly ascribed to Emma Goldman, feminist, activist, trouble-maker)

Athena Andreadis is guest blogging this month.

Those who know my outermost layer would consider me a science geek. I’m a proponent of genetic engineering, an advocate of space exploration, a reader and writer of science fiction. However, I found myself unable to warm to either transhumanism or its literary sidekick, cyberpunk. I ascribed this to the decrease of flexibility that comes with middle age and resumed reading Le Guin’s latest story cycle.

But the back of my mind gnawed over the discrepancy. After all, neither transhumanism nor cyberpunk are monolithic, they come in various shades of… and then it hit me… gray. Their worlds contain little color or sound, few scents, hardly any plants or animals. Food and sex come as pills, electric stimuli or IV drips; almost all arts and any sciences not related to individual enhancement have atrophied, along with most human activities that don’t involve VR.

And I finally realized why I balk at cyberpunk and transhumanism like an unruly horse. Both are deeply anhedonic, hostile to physicality and the pleasures of the body, from enjoying wine to playing in an orchestra. I wondered why it had taken me so long to figure this out. After all, many transhumanists use the repulsive (and misleading) term “meat cage” to describe the human body, which they deem a stumbling block, an obstacle in the way of the mind.

This is hoary dualism disguised as futuristic thinking, augmented by healthy doses of queasiness and power fantasies. Ascetics of other eras tried to diminish the body by fasting, flagellating, abstaining from all physical gratification from washing to sex. Techno-monks want to discard it altogether. The goal is a disembodied mind playing World of Warcraft in a VR datastream. If a body is tolerated at all, the ideal is a mixture of metal and ceramic, hairless and poreless, though it still retains the hyper-gendered configurations possible only in cartoons.

Is abandonment of the body such a bad thing? As anyone who lost a limb or went through a major illness can attest, it’s a marvelous instrument whose astonishing abilities become obvious only when it malfunctions. On the other hand, it’s undeniably fragile and humans have lost patience with its shortcomings as technology has overtaken nature. Transhumanists extol such prospects as anti-aging medicine; advanced prosthetics; radical cosmetic surgery, including sex changes; nootropic drugs; and carbon-silicon interfaces, from cyborgs to immersive VR.

I don’t know a single woman who, given the choice, would opt to retain menstruation, pregnancy or menopause (though few would admit it openly). And very few people, no matter how stoic, can face the depradations of chronic disease or age with equanimity. The neo-Rupturists who prophesy the coming of the Singularity can hardly wait to exchange their bodies with versions that will never experience memory lapses or fail to achieve erections at will.

I’m no Luddite, bio or otherwise. I am glad that technology has enabled us to lead lives that are comfortable, leisured and long enough that we can explore the upper echelons of the hierarchy of needs. However, we demean the body at our peril. It’s not the passive container of our mind; it is its major shaper and inseparable partner. If we discard our bodies we run the danger of losing context to our lasting detriment – as we have already done by successive compartmentalizations and sunderings.

Humans are inherently social animals that developed in response to feedback loops between the environment and their own evolving form. Like all lifeforms, we’re jury-rigged. Furthermore, humans are mediocre across the entire spectrum of physical prowess, from range of vision to maximum running speed. Yet this mediocrity probably enabled us to occupy many environmental niches successfully before technology allowed us to impose our wishes on our environment. Optimizing in any direction may push us into dead-end corners, something that has happened to many species we engineered extensively.

This also holds true for our brains. It’s a transhumanist article of faith that intelligence can and must be augmented – but there are many kinds of intelligence. A lot of learning is mediated through the body, from using a screwdriver properly to gauging complex social interactions. Short-circuiting this type of learning results in shallow knowledge that may not become integrated into long-term memory. There is a real reason for apprenticeships, despite their feudal overtones: people who use Photoshop, CAD and laboratory kits without prior “traditional” training frequently make significant errors and often cannot critically evaluate their results. Furthermore, without corrective “pingbacks” from the environment that are filtered by the body, the brain can easily misjudge to the point of hallucination or madness, as seen in phenomena like phantom limb pain.

Another feedback loop is provided by the cortical emotions, which enable us to make decisions. Two prominent side effects of many nootropic drugs are flattening of the emotions and suppression of creativity. Far from fine-tuning perception, the drugs act as blunting hammers. Finally, if we evade our bodies by uploading into a silicon frame (biologically impossible, but let’s grant it as a hypothesis), we may lose the capacity for empathy, as shown in Bacigalupi’s disturbing story People of Sand and Slag. Empathy is as instrumental to high-order intelligence as it is to survival: without it, we are at best idiot savants, at worst psychotic killers.

I do believe that our bodies can be improved. Nor does everything have to remain as it is now. I wouldn’t mind having wings that could truly lift me; even less would I mind living without fear of cancer or diabetes. Yet I’m fairly certain that we have to stick with carbon if we want seamless form and function. When I hear talk of "upgrading" to silicon or to ether, I get a strong whiff of cubicleers imagining themselves as Iron Man or Neo. Being alone inside a room used to be a punishment. Being imprisoned inside one’s head is a recipe for insanity. Without our bodies, we bid fair to become not exalted intellects but mad(wo)men in the attic.

Athena

Starship Reckless
It's All in Your Head
The Left Hand of Light

We Now Interrupt Our Regular Programming…

... so that you can set your transporter coordinates to Centauri Dreams, where my friend Paul Gilster is graciously hosting my more extended take on the new Star Trek film. I think that the mixed reactions are universal among those who loved the original Star Trek’s optimism and civility. Here is the closing paragraph of my essay, to whet your appetites:

ST|| is an odd-numbered film in the series, so I’ll give it a long space tether. However, if Uhura degenerates into the Angel in the House or if the certain-to-come sequels become more generic, I will put ST|| permanently in the same category as Star Wars. Those who have read my essay on Star Wars know how dire a fate this is. And though my wrath may not equal that of Khan, if enough of my ilk get disaffected we may abandon all the old lumbering dinosaurs and manage to relaunch the real McCoy — the Firefly-class starship Serenity, with its true love of endless skies and its persistent aim to misbehave.

Athena, guest blogger of this month

The Shifgrethor of Changelings

Athena Andreadis is guest blogging this month.

A slightly different version of this essay appeared in her blog on April 17, 2008. Since then, Thomas Beatie and Nancy Roberts had a daughter and they are expecting a second child.

“Maybe there are only two sexes: men and mothers.”
Alice Sheldon, writing as James Tiptree Jr. to Joanna Russ

A year ago, I caught sight of a headline exclaiming “Pregnant Man!” Intrigued, I read on, only to become more puzzled. I couldn’t figure out the novelty: the future parent, Thomas Beatie, identified and was legally classified as male. However, s/he was chromosomally and somatically female, modified by breast surgery and testosterone injections. So Beatie’s fallopian tubes, ovaries and uterus were intact, making this a conventional pregnancy (and not the first of its kind, either).

For me, the real surprise was how reactions split. With few exceptions, women were positive, whether hetero- or homo-sexual. Most men (again, regardless of sexual orientation) were negative, many virulently so, resorting to utterances that could have emanated from fundamentalist tracts. The transgender community was ambivalent — and amazingly there, too, the division was along lines of gender identification. In essence, the men — born or made — were saying: Why would anyone calling himself a man go through this? That’s what women are for! Could this ever happen to me?? Some said this more or less verbatim. Beatie’s pregnancy pushed the buttons of this issue as forcefully as if the coming child had burst, Alien-like, from a male torso.

While I was pondering this, it dawned on me that unconventional biological and social human genders seem to be predominantly the domain of women in speculative fiction, from singletons (Le Guin’s androgynous Gethenians, Constantine’s hermaphroditic Wraeththu, Slonczewski’s parthenogenetic Sharers) to multiples (Scott’s five-gendered post-FTL humans) to bona fide male pregnancy (in Butler’s Bloodchild). Men tend to stick to dyadic genders and traditional family patterns, even when depicting otherwise exotic aliens.

Biologically, the two gametes of terrestrial lifeforms are a result of evolution once it went down the path of sexual reproduction. There is nothing pre-ordained about this outcome, nor does phenotype mirror genotype: many plants and several animals are unisexual or hermaphroditic, while other animals can switch sexes. Too, biomorphic and behavioral outcomes are not invariably binary. Humans are capable of an enormous repertoire of responses, and I cannot think of one that is completely gender-specific. The troubles start with the relative value assigned to the two genders — and to their behavior, conditioned and enforced by edicts throughout the ages that are as arbitrary as they are punitive.

I can understand the worries of the trans community, whose members are trying to gain acceptance as gay people did before them by adopting rigidly orthodox gender roles. Such stereotyped assignations also occurred in cultures that tolerated intersexes: the North American two-spirited, the Indian hijra. However, the men’s objections reminded me of the “eew” reaction of boys to girls, before the hormonal rise (or is it fall?) of puberty overcomes social conditioning. They highlight a profound and visceral male unease over blurred identities or breached boundaries — in bodies, gender roles, power; a wish to make an absolute, immovable distinction between penetrator and penetrated, implanter and implanted.

In most cultures, men are trained to compartmentalize and make a virtue out of this necessity. Additionally, surgery that accentuates sexual dimorphism draws surprisingly little criticism. Beatie’s biggest transgression was becoming a changeling, someone who cannot be easily pigeonholed. Shapeshifters, from Raven to Loki to Star Trek’s Odo, are never trusted even though all mythologies found it necessary to invent them. What set off the fuses was the perception that Beatie is claiming the perks of both genders — if pregnancy can be viewed as such, considering how dangerous it could be (both physically and socially) before the advent of reliable contraception.

In the last few decades, medical advances have made it possible for people to conceive and bear children by assisted reproduction: sperm banks, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood. Yet all these procedures kept one condition intact: women’s involvement and hence traditional gender roles. Schwarzenegger in Junior notwithstanding, there is no concerted effort to create artificial wombs, which would make childbearing optional for women and possible for men. With the continuing furor over embryonic stem cells, it is unlikely that such an endeavor will be pursued any time soon.

Childbearing and childrearing, even when greatly desired and welcome, take a toll on women individually and collectively, since their investment is much greater. As long as this dichotomy remains, all discussions of true equality (to say nothing of radical social engineering) will remain just vaporous talk. It is possible, of course, that once in vitro pregnancy becomes possible, women will disappear except for a few kept as trophies or specimens — and that humans will designate another group as the perpetual Other. However, I prefer to hope that this will bring true equality, and make everyone able to adopt fluid, flexible identities that, at their best, combine the gentle strength of the Gethenians with the passionate flair of the Wraeththu.

Shifgrethor: to cast a long shadow; prestige, face, social authority (language of Karhide; Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness).

Credits: Top, Shaman by Susan Seddon Boulet;
Bottom, Tilda Swinton as Gabriel in Constantine.

Athena

Starship Reckless

And Ain't I a Human?

Gazing from the Orion Spiral Arm

Athena Andreadis is guest blogging this month.

I want to thank George for inviting me to contribute to his always interesting blog. When we were discussing specifics, I mentioned I favor story arcs rather than hopping around randomly or banging on a single nail. For this blog, the obvious nexus would be the promises and perils of transhumanism as viewed by a biologist -- since the vast majority of transhumanists still seem to come from the domains of either computer programming or the social sciences.

My views are refracted through the additional prisms of being a woman, a non-Anglosaxon from an ancient culture instrumental in shaping the Western world, a cultural half-breed… someone who falls between too many stools to avoid or count. Briefly, though, I believe that humans need to pay equal attention to the outer and inner world, just as stars remain stable by balancing gravity pressure against nuclear fusion tension. Too much action without introspection, and humans turn into stiff upper lips declaiming about manifest destiny. Too much of the reverse, and they become whining navel-gazers.

So, tentatively, I plan to explore the mind/body problem in transhumanism (and cyberpunk, the Watson to TH's Holmes), artificial wombs, neuroenhancers and conclude with a discussion of the false dilemma between transhumanism and space exploration. I may take sideroads along the way, if something particularly absorbing comes up. Join me for the roaming:

Let me set sail for open water,
With gun salutes and pealing bells!

Odysseus Elytis, from Sun the First

Athena
Starship Reckless
Forever Young

Image: Serenity starship, Firefly class

Athena Andreadis guest blogging in May

I'm pleased to announce that Athena Andreadis will be guest blogging on Sentient Developments during the month of May. Andreadis is a fellow of the IEET, Associate Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the author of To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek.

Athena arrived in the United States from Greece at 18 to pursue biochemistry and astrophysics as a scholarship student at Harvard and MIT. She narrowly chose the former discipline while never fully abandoning the latter, and now conducts basic research in molecular neurobiology. Among her academic endeavors she studies the gene regulatory mechanism known as alternative splicing. The long-term goal of her research is to understand how the brain works, and contribute to the struggle against mental retardation and dementia.

When not conjuring in the lab, Athena writes (and used to review) fiction, an unexpected benefit of chronic insomnia. She has always wondered about the possibility of life on other planets and the limits of the human body/mind in radically altered environments. Combining these interests, she wrote To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek (which I'm proud to say has a spot on my shelf) a stealth science book that explores biology, psychology and sociology through the lens of eponymous series. In the wake of the book, she got invited to give talks in venues ranging from NASA to the NIH and to write articles in such places as Astronomy Magazine and Strange Horizons.

In addition to these pursuits, Andreadis reads voraciously, collects original art and has traveled extensively.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing her contributions here on Sentient Developments.

In the meantime, be sure to check out her articles, "Why Science Needs Fiction," "E. T., Call Springer-Verlag!", and "We Must Love One Another or Die: A Critique of Star Wars."

The intersection of transhumanism and space travel

Athena Andreadis, author of To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek, has penned an article about the implications of transhumanism on the future of space travel. In the article, titled "Dreamers of a Better Future, Unite!," Andreadis correctly observes that most transhumanists with a "a socially progressive agenda" have very little interest in the whole idea of space travel and interstellar colonization.

Indeed, outside of humanitarian efforts, most transhumanists would rather explore inner space than outer space.

But Andreadis argues that transhumanists should take space travel more seriously. She writes,

Consider the ingredients that would make an ideal crewmember of a space expedition: robust physical and mental health, biological and psychological adaptability, longevity, ability to interphase directly with components of the ship. In short, enhancements and augmentations eventually resulting in self-repairing quasi-immortals with extended senses and capabilities – the loose working definition of transhuman.

Coordination of the two movements would give a real, concrete purpose to transhumanism beyond the rather uncompelling objective of giving everyone a semi-infinite life of leisure (without guarantees that either terrestrial resources or the human mental and social framework could accommodate such a shift). It would also turn the journey to the stars into a more hopeful proposition, since it might make it possible that those who started the journey could live to see planetfall.

Ultimately, she makes the case that human intelligence, if it is to survive and prosper, needs to get off planet. Andreadis concludes by saying,

Despite their honorable intentions and progressive outlook, if the transhumanists insist on first establishing a utopia on earth before approving spacefaring, they will achieve either nothing or a dystopia as bleak as that depicted in Paolo Bacigalupi’s unsparing stories. If they join forces with the space enthusiasts, they stand a chance to bring humanity through the Singularity some of them so fervently predict and expect – except it may be a Plurality of sapiens species and inhabited worlds instead.

Read the entire article.