The message of transhumanism - the hope that inheres in the enhancement of human capability seems overrated to me.

I'm not worried about what I can do. I'm not really interested in doing more. I'm happy. I'm satisfied.

Too often, it seems like the carrots of greater intelligence, memory, stamina, etc., seem to serve primarily to boost our competitiveness in the global marketplace. And when you think, as I have, that competition is silly and counterproductive, especially when compared to legitimate, existing collaborative alternative means of production and living, the shine quickly comes off the gadget. I can't get really excited about having the competitive advantage of a "transhuman" modification when I realize that, long before some joe like me can have it done, everyone else will, too. As a poorer American, My adoption of technology is not not to get ahead, but to keep up; to stay alive.

What I am more intersted in is shoring up and neutralizing human vulnerability, fragility, and precarity.

Thus, the mere existence of enhancement technologies and modifications fails to tantalize. It is a foregone conclusion that, if techniques are feasible, the status quo being what it is, the privileged will have them, and the unprivileged will lack them. This should surprise no one, and disappoint us all.

What is needed are not new techniques to configure physical gadgetry, but new ways of organizing and distributing them. We need innovation in policy and economy, as much as we need them in technology.

Enhancement must give way, for now, to deprecaritization. As we make progress with the latter, the former will be more exciting and worthwhile.

The systems and techniques that we use to insure the health and homes of the extant human race (for starters) are more important to me than the development, emergence, and germination of the next one.

Don't get me wrong. Pushing the limits is great. But it is a dull prize when the ground beneath your feet is still unstable.

When the promise of humanism is yet unkept, what attraction can transhumanism hold?

Comments –Nato