Definitions of Posthumanity and related terms

• The intercourse between human beings and intelligent machines has

challenged the traditional understanding of what it means to be "human."
Technology's pervasive and penetrating presence has resulted in a
posthuman condition: a state in which there is a continuous collapsing of
man and machine.
Attaway, Jennifer (2004). “Cyborg Bodies and Digitized Desires: Posthumanity and Philip K.
Dick,” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture [online], vol. 4, iss. 3.
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/043/attaway.htm

• While Sloterdijk and Monsanto imagine genetic engineering as humanity's

way of perfecting nature and thus undermining the originary and
hierarchical divide between nature and culture, Man and machine, critical
posthumanism questions the view that there was ever an originary divide
between these things in the first place.
Didur, Jill (2003). “Re-Embodying Technoscientific Fantasies: Posthumanism, Genetically
Modified Foods, and the Colonization of Life,” Cultural Critique, iss. 53, p. 98-115.

• [I]t is not just the possible reconstitutions of social life and culture which
interest us […], it is the impact of these changes on the body, too. It is here
that developments in technology point towards the possibilities of post-
bodied and post-human forms of existence. If the development of
technology has entailed a process of the extension of the body and bodily
functions to enable us to control the environment more efficiently, it offers
the ultimate possibility of the displacement of the material body from the
confines of its immediate lived space. Hence it is not just the range of
technological-human fusions which make possible a new range of
embodied forms which is an interesting source of speculation, it is the
production and control of new information-generated environments and
the range of body simulations and other entities which will inhabit them
which for many is the most exciting prospect. It is not just the making and
remaking of bodies, but the making and remaking of worlds which is
crucial here.

Featherstone, Mike, Burrows, Roger (1995). “Cultures of Technological Embodiment: An

Introduction,” Body and Society, vol. 1, iss. 3-4, p. 1-19.
• Transhumanism is a futuristic philosophy which celebrates the potential of
advanced technologies to augment human functioning to unprecedented
degrees, ushering in a new phase of ‘posthuman’ evolution. (p. 65)
Graham, Elaine (2002). “‘Nietzsche Gets a Modem’: Transhumanism and the Technological
Sublime,” Literature and Theology: And International Journal of Religion, Theory, and Culture,
vol. 16, iss. 1, p. 65-80.

• It is important to recognize that the construction of the posthuman does

not require the subject to be a literal cyborg. Whether or not interventions
have been made on the body, new models of subjectivity emerging from
such fields as cognitive science and artificial life imply that even a
biologically unaltered Homo sapiens counts as posthuman. The defining
characteristics involve the construction of subjectivity, not the presence of
nonbiological components. (p. 4)

• The posthuman does not really mean the end of humanity. It signals
instead the end of a certain conception of the human, a conception that
may have applied, at best, to that fraction of humanity who had wealth,
power, and leisure to conceptualize themselves as autonomous beings
exercising their will through individual agency and choice. (p. XXX)
Hayles, N. Katherine (1999). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

• Bridging these gaps and connecting these discontinuities is the task taken
on by the three Virtual Reality artworks discussed here: "Traces," by
Simon Penny and his collaborators; "Einstein's Brain," by Alan Dunning,
Paul Woodrow, and their collaborators; and "nØtime," by Victoria Vesna
and her collaborators. If art not only teaches us to understand our
experiences in new ways but actually changes experience itself, these
artworks engage us in ways that make vividly real the emergence of ideas
of the body and experiences of embodiment from our interactions with
increasingly information-rich environments. They teach us what it means
to be posthuman in the best sense, in which the mindbody is experienced
as an emergent phenomenon created in dynamic interaction with the
ungraspable flux from which also emerge the cognitive agents we call
intelligent machines. Central to all three artworks is the commitment to
understanding the body and embodiment in relational terms, as processes
 emerging from complex recursive interactions rather than as preexisting
entities. (p. 303)

Hayles, N. Katherine (2002). “Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual
Environments,” Configurations: A Journal of Literature , Science and Technology, vol. 10, iss. 2,
p. 297-320 (special issue).

• How to tell the story of the posthuman? One way is to trace a linear
trajectory from the regime of the human to the posthuman, as Hans
Moravec does in anticipating a postbiological future of humanity or Ray
Kurzweil in seeing intelligent machines as our evolutionary descendents.
The essays in this special issue take another route, complicating linearity
by enfolding binary distinctions into more complex topographies. In the
process, they show with clarity and insight that the posthuman should not
be depicted as an apocalyptic break with the past. Rather, it exists in a
relation of overlapping innovation and replication, a pattern that in How
We Became Posthuman I called seriation, borrowing the term from
archaeological anthropology.
Hayles, N. Katherine (2003). “The Human in the Posthuman,” Cultural Critique, iss. 53, p.
134-137.

• Although the posthuman has been variously defined, most versions

include as a prominent feature the joining of humans with intelligent
machines.

• […] Taken as a group, the essays [on posthumanism] point not so much to
consensus as to common sites where contestations to determine the future
of humanity are especially intense. These include issues of globalization as
disparate cultures race toward informational convergence; performativities
that re-define the human through mimetic imitation of intelligent
machines; and virtual embodiments that discipline human users to
coordinate their perceptions with algorithmic procedures. It is too soon to
say where these engagements will end. Perhaps the only clear conclusions
are that the future of humans will increasingly be entangled with
intelligent machines, and that embodiments will still matter in some sense,
however virtual or cyborgian they become. The posthuman, these essays
suggest, cannot and will not mean only one thing. Posthumans are likely to
be as complex and diverse, as historically and culturally diverse as humans
have been. Whatever the future, we can be sure it will not be simple.
Hayles, N. Katherine (ed. and introd.) (2004). “Refiguring the Posthuman,” Comparative
Literature Studies, vol. 41, iss. 3, p. 311-449 (special issue).

• Posthumanism, as the name of a discourse, suggests an episteme which

comes “after” humanism (“post-humanism”) or even after the human itself
(“post-human-ism”). Implicit in both these articulations is a sense of the
supplanting operations wrought by time, and of the obsolescence in
question affecting not simply humanism as displaced episteme but also,
more radically, the notion and nature of the human as fact and idea. […]

• Nevertheless, some recurrent definitional strategies in regard to the

posthuman persist. There is, most powerfully, the focus on the human-
machine symbiosis already witnessed above. There is Hayles’s very
influential quadripartite characterization, in her book How We Became
Posthuman, of the equivalence of the posthuman to all of the following:
scepticism about life being inevitably dependent on “embodiment in a
biological substrate”; a readiness to see consciousness as an
“epiphenomenon” and a “minor sideshow” in determining “human
identity”; a willingness to regard the body as an “original prosthesis”
whose principle can be extended; faith in the promise of “seamless”
articulations with “intelligent machines.” (p. 14) There is, as a variation,
the focus on the “cybernatural” and the “postnatural,” pointing towards
“the possibility of forms of vitality which do not find their support in the
organic processes of matter . . . but rather in the arena of the artificial,”
such that “the cybernatural designates any practice which uses the space of
the virtual screen as a space of ‘second nature’ through a conflation of
information with vitality.” (Catherine Waldby, The Visible Human
Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine (London and New
York: Routledge, 2000), p. 121) One could trawl for further
characterizations of the posthuman, but the import should be fairly clear
by now. Posthumanism is the discourse which articulates our hopes, fears,
thoughts, and reflections at a post-millenarian time haunted by the
prospects of technology’s apparently essential and causal link with the
finiteness of the human as a biological, cognitive, informational, and
autonomous integrality.
Herbrechter, Stefan, Callus, Ivan (2003). “What’s Wrong With Posthumanism?” Rhizomes:
Cultural Studies Emerging, iss. 7.
http://www.rhizomes.net/issue7/callus.htm
• One of the central threads of discourse constructing the posthuman is the
notion that information is disembodied, a pattern independent of a specific
material medium, capable of being rewritten into different substrates. As
Hayles shows in How We Became Posthuman, this notion grew in tandem
with deep concerns about preserving the liberal humanist subject dear to
the creators of the first wave of cybernetics. The liberal humanist subject
was conceived as a rational, self-regulating, free, and autonomous
individual with clearly demarcated boundaries and a sense of agency
linked with a belief in enlightened self-interest. Cybernetics was
envisioned by scientists and engineers such as Norbert Wiener, Warren
McCulloch, and their colleagues at the Macy Conferences as a way to
maximize human potential in a chaotic and unpredictable postwar world.
They wanted to ensure a position of mastery and control for the liberal
subject removed from the noise and chaos. The vision of the posthuman
emerging from the work of Moravec, Minksy, and others, Hayles has
argued, simply reinscribes that liberal humanist subject—indeed, seeks to
immortalize it in future generations of software and hardware. For those
convinced that this view of the subject underpins a sense of manifest
destiny to dominate and control nature that has been detrimental to
women, to other (particularly non-Western) cultures, and to other life-
forms, engaging the techniques through which the posthuman is emerging
offers an opportunity to contend for a different vision. We need not simply
acquiesce in a view of the posthuman as an apocalyptic erasure of human
subjectivity, for the posthuman can be made to stand for a positive
partnership between nature, humans, and intelligent machines. (p.
209-210)

Lenoir, Timothy (ed. and introd.) (2002). “Makeover: Writing the Body into the Posthuman
Technoscape: Part One: Embracing the Posthuman,” Configurations: A Journal of Literature ,
Science and Technology, vol. 10, iss. 2, p. 203-372

• EXTROPY -- The extent of a system's intelligence, information, order,

vitality, and capacity for improvement.
EXTROPIA -- A conception of evolving communities embodying
values of Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic
Optimism, Intelligent Technology, and Spontaneous Order.
EXTROPIAN -- One who seeks to overcome human limits, live
indefinitely long, become more intelligence, and more self-creating. A
 transhumanist who affirms the values and attitudes codified and
expressed in The Extropian Principles.
EXTROPIANISM -- The evolving transhumanist philosophy of extropy.
TRANSHUMAN -- Someone actively preparing for becoming
posthuman. Someone who is informed enough to see radical future
possibilities and plans ahead for them, and who takes every current
option for self-enhancement.
TRANSHUMANISM -- Philosophies of life that seek the continuation
and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently
human form and human limitations by means of science and technology,
guided by life-promoting principles and values.
POSTHUMAN -- Persons of unprecedented physical, intellectual, and
psychological capacity, self-programming, self-constituting, potentially
immortal, unlimited individuals.
SINGULARITY -- The postulated point or short period in our future
when our self-guided evolutionary development accelerates enormously
(powered by nanotechnology, neuroscience, AI, and perhaps uploading)
so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived. Anders
Sandberg. Our definition: When technology advances to the stage that
we can no longer predict the ramifications. The time when social,
political, cultural, technical, and/or religious preconceptions no longer
apply. The break between what we know and what we cannot fathom.
An event--or events--that cause massive change in the very fabric of our
human-ness. Generally thought to foreshadow across-the-board positive
changes, yielding many advances in science, longevity, survival of the
species, social responsibility, and the like. Also considered evolutionary
-- as in the next stage of human development.
OMEGA POINT -- A possible future state when intelligence controls
the Universe totally, and the amount of information processed and stored
goes asymptotically towards infinity. [Origin: Teilhard de Chardin, The
Human Phenomenon. See also Barrow and Tipler, The Cosmological
Anthropic Principle or Tipler's The Physics of Immortality for a more
modern definition.]

Nanotechnology Now
http://www.nanotech-now.com/extropian-sites.htm
 • I. General statements

1. It is now clear that humans are no longer the most important things in
the universe. This is something the humanists have yet to accept.
2. All technological progress of human society is geared towards the
transformation of the human species as we currently know it.
3. In the posthuman era many beliefs become redundant — not least the
belief in human beings.
4. Human beings, like gods, only exist inasmuch as we believe them to
exist.
5. The future never arrives.
6. All humans are not born equal, but it is too dangerous not to pretend
that they are.
7. In the posthuman era, machines will no longer be machines. […]

II. Statements on consciousness, humans and philosophy

[…]
7. Human bodies have no boundaries.
8. No finite division can be drawn between the environment, the body
and the brain. The human is identifiable, but not definable.
[…]
10. There is nothing external to a human, because the extent of a human
cannot be fixed.
[…]
 12. First we had God, humans and nature. The rationalists dispensed
with God, leaving humans in perpetual conflict with nature. The
posthumanists dispense with humans leaving only nature. The
distinctions between God, nature and humanity do not represent any
eternal truth about the human condition. It merely reflects the prejudices
of the societies that maintained the distinctions.

Pepperell, Robert (2005). “The Posthuman Manifesto,” Kritikos: Journal of Postmodern Cultural
Sound, Text and Image, vol. 2. http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03/The%20Posthuman
%20Manifesto.htm

• What does “posthuman” mean? It describes a sentient being that started

out as a human or as a mind with a human way of thinking – and then by
use of technology changes into someone who is no longer human. Such
posthuman beings do not exist currently, therefore any more detailed
description of what they would look like or how they would think and
behave is pure speculation.
However, it is a common mistake that people think by being no longer
human one is automatically no longer humane.
Posthuman.com
www.posthuman.com

• […] I propose to speak about networked digital information humachines in

relation to globalization. I use the awkward term “humachine” to designate
not a prosthesis but an intimate mixing of human and machine that
constitutes an interface outside of the subject/object binary.

Poster, Mark (2004). “The Information Empire,” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 41, iss. 3,
p. 317-334 (special issue).

• [T]here has been unproductive confusion between what one might call a
popular and a more critical posthumanism. […]

• [P]opular posthumanist (sometimes transhumanist) discourse structures

the research agendas of much of corporate biotechnology and informatics
as well as serving as a legitimating narrative for new social entities
 (cyborgs, artificial intelligence, and virtual societies) composed of
fundamentally fluid, flexible, and changeable identities. For popular
posthumanism, the future is a space for the realization of individuality, the
transcendence of biological limits, and the creation of a new social order
(Terranova 1996; Thacker, in this issue). […]

• However, while targeting popular posthumanism, Fukuyama misses out on

the substantial contributions of what Jill Didur (in this issue) calls a
critical posthumanism, an interdisciplinary perspective informed by
academic poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminist and postcolonial
studies, and science and technology studies.
Simon, Bart (2003). “Toward a Critique of Posthuman Futures,” Cultural Critique, iss. 53, p. 1-9.

• The juxtaposed term "posthumanous" was derived from a macabre typo, a

Freudian slip of the fingers soon after 9/11, where "posthuman" and
"posthumous" me[e]t. The call for papers went out with little more than
the following:

• Post·hum·an·ous (p st-hy mə n-nə s) adj. 1. Occurring or continuing

after the death of the human: a posthumanous writing. 2. Published after
the death of the Author: a posthumanous book. 3. Born after the death of
the patriarchy: a posthumanous child. 4. Any activity which presumes the
fatal limitation of the rational-humanist subject.

• […] The term posthuman derives from the myriad other "post" positions
including postindustrialism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and -- that
catch-all of contemporary Occidental societies -- postmodernism, to name
a significant few. In each case the prefix indicates a shift from a dominant,
culturally defined position (or paradigm) into a new, as yet undefined
position. There is certainly no agreement as to what, exactly, constitutes
posthumanism or a posthumanist position beyond the premise that what
previously seemed to constitute the subject position of a "human being"
has been threatened, infiltrated, deconstructed, or denatured.

Smith, Jason C. (ed. and introd.) (2004). “Post-hum-am-ous,” Reconstruction: Studies in

Contemporary Culture [online], vol. 4, iss. 3.
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/043/editorial.htm
World Transhumanist Association
www.transhumanism.org

• FAQ 1: http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/46/ :
“What is transhumanism?”
Transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future that is based on the
premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the
end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase. We
formally define it as follows:
(1) The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility
and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition
through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely
available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human
intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
(2) The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of
technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human
limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in
developing and using such technologies.

• FAQ 2: http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/56/ :
“What is a posthuman?”
It is sometimes useful to talk about possible future beings whose basic
capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer
unambiguously human by our current standards. The standard word for
such beings is “posthuman”. (Care must be taken to avoid
misinterpretation. “Posthuman” does not denote just anything that
happens to come after the human era, nor does it have anything to do
with the “posthumous”. In particular, it does not imply that there are no
humans anymore.)
Many transhumanists wish to follow life paths which would, sooner or
later, require growing into posthuman persons: they yearn to reach
intellectual heights as far above any current human genius as humans are
above other primates; to be resistant to disease and impervious to aging;
to have unlimited youth and vigor; to exercise control over their own
desires, moods, and mental states; to be able to avoid feeling tired,
hateful, or irritated about petty things; to have an increased capacity for
 pleasure, love, artistic appreciation, and serenity; to experience novel
states of consciousness that current human brains cannot access. It
seems likely that the simple fact of living an indefinitely long, healthy,
active life would take anyone to posthumanity if they went on
accumulating memories, skills, and intelligence.
Posthumans could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or
they could be enhanced uploads [see “What is uploading?”], or they
could be the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound
augmentations to a biological human. The latter alternative would
probably require either the redesign of the human organism using
advanced nanotechnology or its radical enhancement using some
combination of technologies such as genetic engineering,
psychopharmacology, anti-aging therapies, neural interfaces, advanced
information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable
computers, and cognitive techniques.

• FAQ 3: http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/57/ :
“What is a transhuman”?
In its contemporary usage, “transhuman” refers to an intermediary form
between the human and the posthuman [see “What is a posthuman?”].
One might ask, given that our current use of e.g. medicine and
information technology enable us to routinely do many things that would
have astonished humans living in ancient times, whether we are not
already transhuman? The question is a provocative one, but ultimately
not very meaningful; the concept of the transhuman is too vague for
there to be a definite answer.
A transhumanist is simply someone who advocates transhumanism [see
“What is transhumanism?”]. It is a common error for reporters and other
writers to say that transhumanists “claim to be transhuman” or “call
themselves transhuman”. To adopt a philosophy which says that
someday everyone ought to have the chance to grow beyond present
human limits is clearly not to say that one is better or somehow currently
“more advanced” than one’s fellow humans.