Transhumanism, Technology, And the Future: Posthumanity Emerging Or Sub-Humanity Descending?(Critical Essay‪)‬

Abstract I explore how the horizon of the future has shifted dramatically from Bertrand Russell's grim early 20th century prognostications based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics to the Transhumanist early 21st century predictions based on the Law of Technology's Accelerating Returns. I argue that Transhumanism combines the values of the developed world's consumer capitalism with the late 20th century realization that technology can be used to re-design the human form of life to fund its vision of technological advancement bringing us to a virtually immortal posthuman future. My conclusion is that there are good reasons to think that this technocalyptic vision rests on a very naive view of technology, one that fails to recognize how technologies subtlety but inevitably re-make their users in their own image, and that consequently the future that Transhumanism will likely bring will be a deeply subhuman one.