Pondering Posthumanity

io9′s Posthumanity Week is winding down. If you missed it, here were the big three essays.

RU Sirius on “The Best-Case Scenario:”

So here’s what happens when we add in the idealistic tech scenario. We get basic control over the structure of matter – nanotechnology as production technology. Matter becomes information that can be shared p2p. It’s tied to desktop manufacturing. You go online, pick up the code for what you want and “print” it. Even if there are still some people who aren’t that resourced, there are plenty of people who want to distribute the free stuff to those in need. Who? Your basic generous open sourcers… your left libertarian types, definitely… but hell, even Nicholas Negroponte wants one laptop per child. Well, one desktop unit per person shouldn’t be too difficult under these conditions. In essence, within a decade or less of production nanotechnology, there is no resource scarcity, with the exception of physical space, and no distribution problem.

Jamais Cascio’s “Your Posthumanity is Boring Me:”

Those of us of a certain age remember the birth of Louise Brown, in 1978, quite vividly. Ms. Brown was the first baby born through in-vitro fertilization, or IVF. Many of you reading this likely know someone who has used (or conceived via) IVF; some of you may be children of IVF yourselves, and are asking now “yeah, so what?” But in 1978, you wouldn’t have been an IVF conception, you would have been a TEST TUBE BABY, and clearly the first in a line of “superbabies” just waiting to take over. I’m not exaggerating. Even James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA, was quoted as saying “All hell will break loose, politically and morally, all over the world.” But hysteria quickly turned into boredom, and the disruptive became the commonplace.

And J. Hughes “Beyond the Human Race:”

What exactly is this human genome that needs such a defense? It can’t include the 99% of our genetic code we share with other species. Hopefully it isn’t reducible to genes for hairlessness or upright posture or hidden estrus, since I doubt we would deny citizenship to anyone born of humans who lacked these traits. If defending this human genome requires throwing would be genetic enhancers before the Hague we can hopefully figure out which genes in particular are key.

Perhaps if we examine human genetic origins we could pinpoint the key genes that caused us to suddenly mutate into humans. But the paleogenetic record just mucks up the idea of humanness. The publication last week of genetic comparisons of humans and Neandertals revealed that our two “species” were interbreeding as recently as 60,000 years ago. Only Africans appear to have escaped the taint of Neandertal miscegenation.