This past weekend at the Humanity+ @ Parsons conference in NYC I had a chance to attend the debut screening of Mark Wexler’s new documentary, How to Live Forever. The film chronicles Wexler’s struggle to come to grips with his mother’s recent death and his ensuing existential crisis. To help cope with his newfound dread, Wexler ventures down a number of paths that might help him achieve a longer life. To this end, he interviews centenarians, gerontologists, health and fitness gurus, anti-aging hucksters, and anyone else with an opinion on how to extend life spans.

Of interest to the transhumanist and radical life extension communities, Wexler talks to Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil, and Tanya Jones of Alcor. But in addition to this he is lectured on hormone therapy by Suzanne Summers, takes a stab at caloric restriction, and visits with elderly Okinawans in Japan. Importantly, he explores and treats each issue with a certain seriousness—tongue just so slightly in cheek—giving each person or approach its due consideration. And by doing so, he brings the viewer into each world in an entertaining way and and then let’s them make their own minds on the efficacy of each approach.

That said, the central thrust of the documentary is rather weak; Wexler’s struggle is clearly contrived, uninteresting and underdeveloped. Thankfully it’s the characters and insights into aging that give this film its spark. Every segment, location and person that’s explored by Wexler is a little gem that offers insights into both life extension practices and novel approaches to living a healthy life. Wexler offers some wonderful food for thought by juxtaposing a caloric restriction advocate with a glutenous food critic, by visiting a nursing home in which robots are used to comfort the elderly, and by highlighting the fact that the world’s oldest woman on record smoked, drank and lived alone until her dying day.

In the end, the film offers no real solutions. Its life-affirming insights, many of which are provided by Wexler’s best friend, are pedestrian and unsatisfying. The final shot of the documentary shows Wexler sifting through his dead mother’s paintings, as if to suggest that she lives on through her work. But as Woody Allen once coyly noted, the key to achieving true immortality is by not dying in the first place.

How to Live Forever is a wonderful introduction to the sub-cultures that are a part of life extension, but it skirts past some of the deeper philosophical and ethical issues that are integral part of the larger discussion. The result is a quaint but highly enjoyable film. Those looking for something more analytical, profound or scientific, however, will need to look elsewhere.

Neuroscientist Ed Boyden shows how, by inserting genes for light-sensitive proteins into brain cells, he can selectively activate or de-activate specific neurons with fiber-optic implants. With this unprecedented level of control, he's managed to cure mice of analogs of PTSD and certain forms of blindness. And on the horizon: neural prosthetics.

I knew this would happen eventually, and it finally did at the recently concluded Humanity+ @ Parsons conference in NYC: mass confusion over the term "posthumanism."

You see, there are actually three legitimate but subtly different definitions of the term. And at the Parsons conference, an event that brought designers and transhumanists together, this created an interesting problem that resulted in consistent misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Not to mention a wide differing of opinion.

For most transhumanists, posthumanism is the general idea that we should strive to become posthuman, namely human beings who have been augmented and modified to such a degree that they can no longer be classified as such. A posthuman could be a hyper-genetically modified person, a cyborg, or even a completely non-corporeal uploaded consciousness.

The roots of transhumanist thinking come from the Enlightenment era and is very much informed by secular Humanism. A general premise that drives the quest for a posthuman condition is that steady and significant progress is attainable through the application of science and reason and that we ought to take a human-centric approach to our endeavors (i.e. "If we don't play God, who will?"). And it's not enough to work towards social, political and institutional reform, argue the transhumanists, we should also work to modify and improve the human mind and body itself.

But to many in the design community and European academia (excluding Nick Bostrom's crew at Oxford), the term has its roots in postmodernist thinking. Its focus is more conceptual than practical, more external than internal. Also known as philosophical posthumanism, it is an area of inqiry that is concerned with the blurring lines between the human body and its environment and how our external tools have become extensions of our selves. Posthumanists in this context are interested in exosomatic possibilities, such as extended selves and remote presence. They tend to argue that the skin barrier is an increasingly poor dividing line for determining where the human begins and ends. For more on this approach, I recommend The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness beyond the Brain by Robert Pepperell (2003). And be sure to read my review.

In addition to this, there is an ancillary school of thought which suggests that posthumanism implies post-Humanism (as in "after Humanism"). This is the suggestion that humans have no inherent rights to destroy nature or ethically set themselves above it. Human knowledge is also reduced to a less controlling position, which tends to be seen as the defining aspect of the world. These posthumanists admit limitations and fallibility of human intelligence, even though they do not suggest abandoning the rational tradition of humanism.

While I don't necessarily agree with this line of thinking, I do find the idea of human primacy a bit outdated in consideration of human enhancement, the presence of nonhuman animal persons, and the potential for artificially intelligence persons. But I don't agree that Humanism implies human domination over nature or an indifference to it.

At any rate, these are all very different approaches to posthumanism. Transhumanist posthumans are concerned with the internal world as they look to modify minds and bodies, often in relation to a complexifying and changing environment. Academic/philosophical posthumanists, on the other hand, are interested in identity and interaction – and they're certainly not too keen on the human-redesign front.

Transhumanists definitely faced some criticism from these folks at the Parson's conference. This differing of opinion and perspective resulted in some interesting, provocative and at some times heated moments. But it was all good as it provided some needed passion and contradiction into an otherwise consensual and agreeable gathering of minds and ideas.

Just got back from New York City where I attended the Humanity+ @ Parsons conference on May 14th and 15th. I always have a great time at these events, and this conference was no exception.

I'll be writing about the conference over the coming days and weeks, but I will say that it was interesting to see all the emphasis paid not to enhancement per se, but to alternative forms of human re-design and modification. Kinda makes sense if you think about it: it was a design-meets-transhumanism conference after all. But that said, I'm left wondering if it's part of a broader trend.

Transhumanists, it would seem, are not as purely fixated on augmentation as they used to be; it’s becoming more than just about being smarter, faster, or stronger. It’s also about acquiring novel capacities and being able to experience different things.

One thing I did observe, however, was that it was the transhumanists and not the designers who emphasized these points. I am surprised at how little consideration designers, architects and artists still give to the idea of human re-engineering. They're still largely fixated on externalities—things interface design, user experience, and environmental factors.

Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with these things, but we need to also consider making meaningful alterations to the human body and mind as well. As I said during my talk on designer psychologies, it's time to start changing our minds and bodies to suit our environment and technologies rather than the other way around.

Fundamentally, a lot of this reluctance (or just sheer ignorance) has to do with the design community's adoption of an academic posthumanism that's rooted in postmodernist thinking (I will elaborate on this in a future post). This is contrasted with the transhumanist take on posthumanism which is driven by secular Humanist and Enlightenment ideals.

So, as noted, a number of transhumanists addressed the issue of human modification and re-design outside the context of mere enhancement.

Artificial intelligence theorist Ben Goertzel argued that, as we work to create AGI (artificial general intelligence), we'll have to create minds that can interpret and navigate through specific modal environments. Goertzel was addressing synthetic minds, but his point could be applied to humans as well. It made me wonder if we will someday be able to significantly modify human experience as it relates to environmental context.

Neuroscientist Anders Sandberg talked about the advent of novel capacities (such as new senses) that have no objective or easily distinguishable purpose. He gave the example of Todd Huffman's magnetic fingers which allow him to sense magnetic fields. Sandberg likened this to the body modification community. Modification can be done strictly for the sake of it, or just for personal experimentation. Sometimes it’s worth trying something weird or different just to see what happens; there isn't necessarily a problem to be solved. And at the very least it provides a fascinating outlet for human creativity and expression.

Similarly, bio-artist Adam Zaretsky made the claim that we should be more adventurous and imaginative when it comes to augmentation. While his ethics were at times suspicious (he seemed to believe that we can modify and hybridize nonhuman animals indiscriminately), his argument that we should think of biology as both our medium and canvas struck a few chords with conference attendees. Zaretsky's flesh fetish and resultant shock art showed that the potential for out-of-the-box modifications is significant and bizarre, but that it can only be explored given more daring (and an apparent love of icky things). He put it aptly when he said, "Humanity is nature in drag."

Bioethicist James Hughes had a unique take on things with his talk on building resilient minds. While I would agree that this could be classified as a kind of enhancement, the types of cognitive changes that he talked about were fairly fungible and context specific. It seemed more alt-transhumanism to me when compared to traditional discussions about increased memories, enhanced intelligence, and so on. Perhaps Hughes's most interesting suggestion was that we should be able to alter our brain state to match our situation or predicament; we would essentially be changing our natures on the fly in order to cope and adapt. Very post 9/11 transhumanism.

And as for my talk on designer psychologies, I basically argued in favour of creating alternative minds. By using autism as an example, I demonstrated that there is tremendous value and potential through increased neurodiversity, and that we, as neurotypicals, need to be careful about labeling these different kinds of thinking as being pathological. While I agree that some conditions are worthy of such distinctions, we need to be open minded to the possibility that alternative psychologies have an intrinsic value that can yield novel experiences and, as a result, create entirely new expressions, insights and experience (I'll publish my entire talk a bit later).

Now, as the transhumanist diehards are inclined to remind me, much of this isn’t really anything new. Transhumanists have been talking about body modification, alternative minds and novel capacities since day one. But it was nice to see such consensus at the same conference—a strong indication that these ideas are gaining currency and becoming a larger part of the conversation. It’s good to see more lateral thinking when it comes to considering new capacities and the motives behind our desires to reshape the human condition.