Robo Sapiens munity centres. Rothman portrays SELF’s involvement in Benin as representative of the way “relatively low technology [can be applied] in a novel way that changes the lives of people from one of struggle and poverty to one of abundance”. It is an admirable model, making use of simple technology to revolutionise agriculture and infrastructure in the region. However, this analogy between current and future technologies obscures several key issues.
TRANSHUMANISTS SEE TECHNOLOGICAL ENHANCEMENT OF THE HUMAN ORGANISM AS A NECESSARY AND INEVITABLE STEP, ERADICATING SUFFERING AT ALL LEVELS OF SOCIETY Firstly, solar technology is not an emerging technology. It has taken decades for solar energy systems to become affordable in communities like those SELF is supporting in Benin. Secondly, although the photovoltaic solar systems provided by SELF are purchased by the villagers who use them (through microcredit financing), the fact remains that SELF is a charity. Biotechnology is largely the preserve of multinational corporations. The charitable economic model of SELF is unlikely to be mirrored by the leading
biotech companies currently developing transhuman technologies, such as Monsanto, which is already renowned for monopolising the agricultural industry in developing nations. Monsanto’s business model involves using biological patents, meaning that processes that might be universally available are instead used for the economic benefit of the company. Finally, there is the risk of substandard human enhancement technology being implemented in developing nations. Much of the developing world has been scarred by pharmaceutical piracy and illegal drug testing: in Nigeria, the Pfizer-Trovan drug trial left 11 children dead as the result of a highly controversial (and possibly illegal) trial of an unregistered drug. Rothman claims: “The most important safeguards we need are those which protect the right to conduct research and develop enhancement technologies.” Serious consideration must surely also be given to the potentially huge disparities in availability, safety and quality of the technologies which might emerge.
versally available. However, transitional technologies are a potentially lucrative market, and have great potential to widen existing social disparities. Human extinction may be nearer than you think, but this is not necessarily something to be feared. Rothman makes it clear that “transhumanists reject the notion of a fixed human nature and see our nature instead as a dynamic evolving process that can be directed under conscious control.” The forthcoming biotechnological revolution could see social inequalities transcended; it could equally see them exacerbated. In its idealism, the transhumanist movement must not forget its egalitarian roots. =
Transhumanism is egalitarian in theory; it remains to be seen whether it will be so in practise. Transhumanists aspire to a future where social stratification is a thing of the past, eradicating suffering by making augmentative technology uni-
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