Excerpt from a facebook conversation:
We should note, at this point, that this is not a new line of thought in the development of transhumanism. As I see it, we are arguably in the movement’s “fourth stage”:
Stage 1: Lots of disparate futurist groups and movements, proto-transhumanism. Very broad, but I’d be inclined to include everything up to and including the 1960s.
Stage 2: 1970s onward – the development of “modern transhumanism”, as articulated by the likes of FM-2030. During this phase the disparate proto-transhumanisms are merging into mini-movements in their own rights… Immortalism, etc. This era culminates (in my mind) with the advent of the Extropy Institute, which although technically a subset of transhumanism, comes to exemplify and unify the transhumanist movement.
Stage 3: The World Transhumanist Association & Humanity+. In my opinion, this phase (the phases overlap, obviously) embodies the point of view that Robert is advocating… offer a nice, safe, inclusive, “user-friendly” message. Tone down the Extropian excesses. Get mentioned in mainstream media and play down the sci-fi angle. Sound reasonable.
Stage 4: While on some levels stage 3 is succeeding, on others it is failing. Young & counterculture enthusiasts don’t always *want* to “tone it down”. Sometimes the relentless PR feels like deception… it has reached a point where some don’t even like to call themselves transhumanists anymore, for fear of offending a Luddite somewhere. Stage 4 doesn’t really exist yet, but it’s in the air. Small groups, young, painfully earnest for the most part, eschewing irony and self-deprecation. Zero State is part of this new mood.
Maybe this ‘stage 4′ I envisage will never come to pass. Maybe the true promise of ‘stage 3′ has yet to be revealed, but personally, I doubt it.
EDIT:
It has been pointed out to me that in addition to what we might consider to be (horizontal) ‘phases’, transhumanism also has (vertical) ‘threads’ cutting across them. One such thread is that of narrow-focus groups engaged in practical activity, such as the Life Extension Foundation, Foresight Institute, SingInst, Methuselah Foundation, and SENS Foundation (to name a few).
If transhumanism were a biological cell, then these groups would be something like its organelles… internal islands of specific functionality and concern which have existed since the movement’s early ‘evolutionary’ history, largely oblivious to the broader contexts of the outside world. In some ways, these groups might be justifiably considered the beating heart of the movement – they’ve always been there, aren’t going anywhere, and are focused on getting stuff done. In other ways, however, the question of transhumanism’s place in society, the fate of its big ideas and questions of how to implement them, largely seem to pass these groups by, simply not part of their organizational remit.
I found a book a few months ago, called “Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered” by Lynne White Jr. put out by MIT in 1968, that struck me how synchronous it was with the things I’ve been thinking and reading for the last year or so. I hadn’t realized until reading that work that these ideas are not entirely contemporary but have a sixty plus year line of development and sophistication.
Any recommendations for other works on paper charting the development of tranhumanism in its early years. Currently I am reading a pretty awesome text called “Heredity, Evolution,and Society” by I. Michael Lerner from UCB in 1968 as well that is (proto-genetics aside) bringing up many points that I never considered before. Looking for more of these.
[...] The Four Ages of Transhumanism [...]
[...] are arguably now on the verge of a fourth phase in the development of the Transhumanist [...]