More (Unsolicited) Advice for the Technophiles

I'm not a transhumanist, but I play one on google.

I think of myself as a techno-ethicist, technocultural critic, and progressive technology advocate. Many of my friends and colleagues are transhumanist-identified technophiles, but despite our many shared concerns and enthusiasms it just has never been clear to me how the term "transhumanist" is supposed to function as a coherent designation of identity, the kind around which one could organize any sort of effective identity movement. (I think "identity" is a rather outmoded way of organizing a personal narrative or political movement in any case -- so twentieth century!) Technology enthusiasm seems too general to constitute a way of life in need of promotion or protection, and the advocacy of specific developmental outcomes never seems to solicit universal assent among all the transhumanist-identified people presumably subsumed under the term. Not to mention, some of the people who are transhumanist-identified really, you know, freak me out.

Despite all this, I am quite happy to occasionally step up and analyze, advise, and admonish my many patient transhumanist-identified friends. Now is one of those times.

It seems to me that there is altogether too much of an emphasis on compiling enemies lists, circling wagons, and responding to sprawling laundry lists of the putative objections of critics in transhumanist discursive spaces and sites. I think all this imbues you with a cast of extreme embattlement, damaging defensiveness, and pointless distraction.

And, my dears, why so much explaining why transhuman-type organizations are not cults? Everybody knows that only people in cults ever do this.

You need to be coming up with alternative ways of framing issues that facilitate good technology outcomes, and ways of appealing to far more people. Think of all the people you are going to share the future with, and all the people who will collaborate in its creation. Surely you want to start addressing more of them some time soon?

You should be too busy offering up useful formulations for policy debates to be responding interminably to the misrepresentations of others. While it is often important to respond to errors and mistakes, it is best when this happens in the context of debates among people who already respect one another, rather than sniping from the sidelines. Until transhumanish organizations have a real place at the table I think it would be better to change the subject when wrongheaded technophobic viewpoints are aired, by providing progressive alternatives to them.

Whenever you come upon a social/bio-conservative formulation or framing that threatens to impede progress, try to think of an alternative formulation that circumvents it. Address the reasonable fears that drive the conservative position while keeping open the possibility of progress the conservative position seeks to foreclose. When you focus on what is wrong with a conservative framing of an issue it is too easy to consolidate the underlying terms and connections of the conservative outlook in a way that keeps it alive, even if you manage to poke holes in some specific position that expresses it.

Avoid hype at all costs. Don't deny or denigrate reasonable fears. Try to avoid jargon and neologisms, even if this seems to make an outcome that excites or terrifies you feel a little boring. Whenever it is possible to express your hopes or interests in terms of bland mainstream values, do so. Say it with me: Choice, healthy, safe, cheap, fair.

Whenever a long-term developmental outcome preoccupies your attention, ask whether there are more proximate developmental stages on which that superlative outcome depends, and whether they must be advocated for first. Think for the future, act in the present.

Imagine making the case for an outcome you desire for an audience of people who are reasonable but who don't yet agree with you on anything. Devote your creative intelligence to appealing to those who do not yet agree with you, rather than debunking those who disagree with you. Make the ones who disagree with you irrelevant and you won't have to waste so much of your time explaining to everybody why they're wrong.

Some more specific issues and examples:

[1] If it really is too late to debunk the pernicious rhetoric of "Frankenfoods," start to circumvent it now by forcefully pushing "superorganics" generally and market more conventional GM as high-end niche "designer" foodstuffs that will trickle back down once they demonstrate their safety and acquire allure.

[2] Nano-advocates should heed well the Frankenfood example -- "goo" is the least of your worries: nanotech is being framed as toxic chemicals and toxic waste.

Slightly longer-term, when robust Drexler type replicative nanoscale manufacturing hits the cultural radar screen in earnest I fear the only available frame will be WMD. That would be bad. Find a way to Green it and democratize it. Open source nano, baby. Propose and then work to ensure that the benefits of development are fairly shared among all those who shoulder its costs and risks. Work to provide global welfare entitlements via the unprecedented anticipated productivity gains of maturing nanotechnology. Let's insist on a global basic income guarantee and universal healthcare, at last (and at least)! Also, reassure people about safety concerns through conspicuous regulation and oversight by legitimate accountable public authorities.

[3] Advocates of longevity medicine are being Swift-Boated as immortality snake-oil salesmen -- and so you should make a point of distinguishing yourselves from both the people who promise and the ones who declaim eternal life via technology. Immortality is a theological concept freighted with unanticipated associations and unpredictable effects. Who needs it? Talk instead about genetic medicine, better health, and specific diseases and conditions -- including, as it happens, the seven kinds of damage de Grey identifies with senescence.