Visions of Technological Transcendence: Human Enhancement and the Rhetoric of the Future

Abstract

James A. Herrick Rhetoric of Science and Technology Edited by Alan Gross Information and Pricing 978-1-60235-875-1 (paperback, $32); 978-1-60235-876-8 (hardcover, $65) 978-1-60235-877-5 (PDF, $19.99) © 2017 by Parlor Press. 240 pages with notes, bibliography, and index. Bookstores : Order by fax, mail, or phone. See our "Sales and Ordering Page" for details. Reviews Sid Dobrin in Composition Forum (2018) John McLellan in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication , vol. 62, no. 1, March 2019. DOI: 10.1109/TPC.2019.2895227 Description The human enhancement movement—with Transhumanism as its best-known and most influential manifestation—promotes dramatic mental and physical augmentations to be realized by the radical and coordinated appropriation of biotechnology and computer science. Goals of Transhumanism include immortality, the merger of humans and machines, human-level artificial intelligence, and space colonization. The discourse of human enhancement is marked by the imminent emergence of a posthuman species and the culmination of human history in a technological upheaval referred to as the Singularity. Visions of Technological Transcendence approaches the rhetoric of human enhancement as a system of mythic narratives, each developing around a key tenet of enhancement thought.  These strategic stories are treated as myths, providing "imaginative patterns" for predicting technology's trajectory, envisioning the technological redemption of the human race, aligning the mundane world with a transcendent, technological future, and attributing a sacred quality to scientific progress. Despite their scientific cast, these narratives rest on and promote a futuristic ideology originating in a range of non-scientific sources. Chapters explore the narratives of progress, technologically directed evolution, the person as information, the posthuman as supplanting Homo sapiens , technological immortality, limitless artificial intelligence, and space colonization as human