Transhumanism

Transhumanism, broadly speaking, is a set of beliefs with a common theme of there being an evolutionary plateau beyond the current Homo sapiens. Such a belief, particularly in a negative form, is a common theme in science fiction, especially movies such as The Matrix or the Terminator series, where humanity has been essentially replaced by machine life, or TV shows such as Babylon 5, where humanity itself evolves beyond the need for physical bodies as we know them.

While frequently laughed off as speculation at best by most rationalists (especially in light of the many failures of artificial intelligence), transhumanism is a strongly-held belief among many computer geeks, notably such alpha geeks as synthesizer and accessible computing guru Ray Kurzweil (a believer in the "technological singularity", where technology evolves beyond humanity's current capacity to understand or anticipate it) and Sun Microsystems founder and Unix demigod Bill Joy (who believes the inevitable result of AI research is the obsolescence of humanity).

See also

• Cryonics

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