Transhumanism Quotes

“The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust.”
― Donna Haraway

“Man is not born free, but everywhere in biological chains. People of the world, unite! - you have nothing to lose but your biological chains.”
― Simon Young, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto

“Man’s relationship with technology is complex. We always invent technology, but then technology comes back and reinvents us”
― Atul Jalan, Where Will Man Take Us?: The bold story of the man technology is creating

“We are starting to direct the evolution of our biology and of our minds ourselves...As we begin to liberate our thoughts, our memes, our consciousness from the biological constraints that we presently have, this will allow us to evolve far faster and ever faster.”
― Peter H. Diamandis

“By definition, posthumanism (I call it ‘cyberhumanism’) is to replace transhumanism at the center stage circa 2035. By then, mind uploading could become a reality with gradual neuronal replacement, rapid advancements in Strong AI, massively parallel computing, and nanotechnology allowing us to directly connect our brains to the Cloud-based infrastructure of the Global Brain. Via interaction with our AI assistants, the GB will know us better than we know ourselves in all respects, so mind transfer, or rather 'mind migration,' for billions of enhanced humans would be seamless, sometime by mid-century.”
― Alex M. Vikoulov, The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence

“It is safe to say that the message spoke of a common shape to all the processes of the world, and insisted there was a unity to all explanations. It confirmed that all phenomena are expressions of a single phenomenon, and while all droplets consider themselves independent, they are nonetheless still ocean through and through.
In that message the great suspicions were vindicated and the old cliches were jettisoned. The hymn of the world was notated and an invitation to join the choir extended. The shape of Being was outlined in all its myriad forms and the whole was expressed in the part.
With the right ears even a lesser creature can hear the song. It is sung constantly, from the heart of each atom and star.
The galaxies hum of shape and form in their essence. That is their secret.
The particles whisper of the nature of proper interactions. That is their game.
And during a storm, in the forest, on the right night, it is no secret that the leaves all sing of God.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“We are all transsexuals, just as we are biological mutants in potentia. This is not a biological issue, however: we are all transsexuals symbolically.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena

“The philosophy that accepts death must itself be considered dead, its questions meaningless, its consolations worn out.”
― Alan Harrington, The Immortalist

“If we don't truly know what something is programmed to do, chances are it is programming us. Once that happens, we may as well be machines ourselves.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Team Human

“No mechanic now for modern cars, no doctor now for modern pathologies. The infinitesimal calculus of viral pathologies, unlocatable by traditional diagnostics, has entirely outstripped the mechanics of the body, just as the electronics of the modern car have outstripped the knowledge of its user. But one can imagine an electronic 'smartness' of the body (like 'smart' cars
or houses) that would inform you of all its anomalies, or even, by a kind of GPS effect, of your position in the space of human relations.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004

“Man is not born free, but everywhere in biological chains. People of the world, unite - you have nothing to lose but your biological chains.”
― Simon Young

“Cynicism is merely sloth, an excuse not to try.”
― Simon Young, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto

“I thus declare the return of Evolutionary Ethics.”
― Simon Young, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto

“As humanism freed us from the chains of superstition, let transhumanism free us from our biological chains.”
― Simon Young, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto

“Transhumanism and the rise of cyborgs will increasingly move humanity from a profound and direct experience with the Divine. Science and academic research are very important for humanity’s growth and evolution as human beings on this planet. The danger lies in the overly sentimental and simple-minded concepts of religion and spirituality that are popular themes in today’s spiritual books. True spirituality is something that is as complex, and at the same time subtle, as the most advanced study of particle physics. A person must devote many years of study, meditation, prayer and other spiritual disciplines, in order to properly develop himself or herself spiritually. Humanity, at this time, must let go of the illusion that true spirituality consists of a kind of emotional “high,” or on the other hand, that true spirituality consists of a kind of militaristic, fanatically disciplinarian obedience to a vast list of rules and regulations.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“Francis Bacon: Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Chris T. Armstrong: Nature, to be transcended, must be amended.

Transhumanism: Using science and technology to transcend our biological limitations.

Biology is just too fragile. Onward to post-biological durability.”
― Chris T. Armstrong

“The four greatest threats to humanity are fundamentalism, nationalism, transhumanism and democracy.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Computation is not the same as thought and emulation is not the same as imagination.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mission Reality

“AI can be programed to imitate human behavior only, but it can't be programmed to feel the emotions that make the humans behave the way they do.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mission Reality

“How can you be relaxed, my friend - when mystics, spiritualists, fundamentalists and transhumanists keep conning people - when the politicians (not all) keep conning people - when the bureaucrats (not all) keep conning people - when the very system of democracy keeps conning people, by depriving them of the faculty of reason, inclusion and thought? Is this modern - is this civilized - is this human? Think.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Operation Justice: To Make A Society That Needs No Law

“Soon it will be a sin for parents to have a child which carries the heavy burden of genetic disease.”
― Robert Edwards

“The future will be dense with computers. They will hang around everywhere in lush growths, like Spanish moss. They will swarm like locusts. But a swarm is not merely a big crowd: Individuals in the swarm lose their identities; the computers that make up this global swarm will blend together into the seamless substance of the cyberspere.”
― David Gelernter

“The history of Man "playing God" is one of deepest subjugation and destruction. We proclaim the good but are unable to break from that which is evil; we are incapable of resisting the allure to become a god made in our fallen image.”
― Carl Teichrib, Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-Enchantment

“For his inability to control his movements, WE temporarily exclude man as a subject for film.
Our path leads through the poetry of machines, from the bungling citizen to the perfect electric man.
In revealing the machine's soul, in causing the worker to love his workbench, the peasant his tractor, the engineer his engine—
we introduce creative joy into all mechanical labor,
we bring people into closer kinship with machines,
we foster new people.
The new man, free of unwieldiness and clumsiness, will have the light, precise movements of machines, and he will be the gratifying subject of our films.”
― Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye

“The best thing would perhaps be to remove consciousness surgically in utero, together with irony, criticism and intelligence - all those qualities that are so fragile and so dangerous to existence in general. One might take advantage of this (all in a specialized Psycho-Genetic Institute, akin to the Institute of Zodiacal Semiurgy, where the surgical removal of star signs is practised) to be rid of the Unconscious, the extraction of which, like the extraction of all the irregularities of the genome, would be a great relief for future generations.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004

“Everything tends to become a satellite - even our brains may be said to be outside us now, floating around us in the countless Hertzian ramifications of waves and circuits.
This is not science fiction, merely a generalization of McLuhan's theory of the 'extensions of man' . Every aspect of human beings - their bodies in their biological, mental, muscular or cerebral manifestations - now floats free in the shape of mechanical or computer-aided replacement parts. McLuhan, however, conceives of all this as a positive expansion - as the universalization of man - through media. This is a very sanguine view. The fact is that all the functions of man's body, so far from gravitating around him in concentric order, have become satellites ordered excentrically with respect to him. They have gone into orbit on their own account; consequently it is man himself, in view of this orbital extraversion of his own functions, his own technologies, who is now in a position of ex-orbitation and ex-centricity. Vis-a-vis the satellites that he has created and put into orbit, it is man with his planet Earth, with his territory, with his body, who is now the satellite. Once transcendent, he has become exorbitate.
It is not just the functions of man's body which, by becoming satellites, make man himself into a satellite. All those functions of our societies - notably the higher ones - which break off and go into orbit, contribute to the process.
Loan, finance, the technosphere, communications - all have become satellites in an inaccessible space and left everything else to go to rack and ruin.
Whatever fails to achieve orbital power is left in a state of abandonment which is permanent, since there is now no way out of it via some kind of transcendence.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena

“People tell you the computer is just a handier, more complex kind of typewriter. But that isn't true. The typewriter is an entirely external object. The page floats free, and so do I. I have a physical relation to writing. I touch the blank or written page with my eyes - something I cannot do with the screen.
The computer is a prosthesis. I have a tactile, intersensory relation to it. I become, myself, an ectoplasm of the screen.
And this, no doubt, explains, in this incubation of the virtual image and the brain, the malfunctions which afflict computers, and which are like the failings of one's own body.
On the other hand, the fact that priority belongs to the network and not to individuals implies the possibility of hiding, of disappearing into the intangible space of the Virtual, so that you cannot be pinned down anywhere, which resolves all problems of identity, not to mention those of alterity.
So, the attraction of all these virtual machines no doubt derives not so much from the thirst for information and knowledge as from the desire to disappear, and the possibility of dissolving oneself into a phantom conviviality.
A kind of 'high' that takes the place of happiness. But virtuality comes close to happiness only because it surreptitiously removes all reference from it. It gives you everything, but it subtly deprives you of everything at the same time. The subject is, in a sense, realized to perfection, but when realized to perfection, it automatically becomes object, and panic sets in.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“Non-reductive physicalism is the very widespread philosophical view that mind and consciousness cannot be reduced to matter but are still caused by matter; essentially it is Machine Man believing in magic without admitting it.”
― Arne Klingenberg, Beyond Machine Man: Who we really are and why Transhumanism is just an empty promise!

“Every creature born in the flesh carried the genes of an ancestor who had lived through the most savage punishment this would could inflict.”
― Greg Egan

“Even a most detailed temporary snapshot of our brains will not magically make us alive again when it is run as a software version on a computer that operates an artificial robot body.”
― Arne Klingenberg, Beyond Machine Man: Who we really are and why Transhumanism is just an empty promise!