Abstract
The isolated, remote, and radically different geographies of Space will have a profound impact on human evolution, not only in the conventional biological sense, but also through the technological mediations that will be indispensable for dwelling in Space. The process of change will shift from slow gradual increments as it is in biology, to a revolutionary, abrupt, full-scale transformation. We should not expect that we will remain human in the conventional sense—but what does it mean then to be ‘posthuman’?
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Notes
- 1.
A semantic ambiguity arises when referring to technological adaptation and technological evolution. There are three possible interpretations:
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1.
Technological adaptation = the regulatory use of technology to adapt to the changing environment which pre-empts a physiological response on the part of the organism (which in turn pre-empts genetic change, and hence, biological evolution).
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2.
Technological evolution (anthropocentric) = following from technological adaptation, the use of technology has induced a permanent morphological (if not genetic) change in the human species; artifice has become integrated into the body such that the body is no longer complete without it; that is, it has become a permanent, indispensable, and resilient defining feature of the human being.
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3.
Technological evolution (technocentric) = technology is itself always changing, building upon itself, and becoming more complex; is technology evolving to serve its own end—self-perpetuation—and thus becoming an ends in itself rather than a means? Or is it evolving in service to the ultimate evolution of humankind (human evolution as final cause)? Circumstances can also give rise to a phenomenon similar to punctuated equilibrium: “Arthur C. Clarke referred to spaceflight as a ‘technological mutation that should not have occurred until the twenty-first century’…Ordinary technological advances are the products of a gradual process of incremental innovation and improvement. Revolutionary technological change may be brought about by social and political movements operating outside conventional market and scientific processes, and then prove to be unsustainable” (Dator 2012, pp. 27–28).
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The invention of the internet demonstrates this acceleration in social transformation: in only the last two decades it has enabled instantaneous, non-spatial, global communication and exchange of information, whereas earlier forms of communication and information exchange developed over a period of centuries. As a result, it has become the single most democratizing force in human history; access to information is no longer the exclusive domain of the powerful elite or hegemony. It has also given rise to the creation of online persona—malleable alter egos—that supplement identity.
- 3.
“Margulis and Sagan comment on how modern techno-scientific humanity’s first steps in genetic engineering are a return to and appropriation of capacities bacteria have possessed for several billion years: ‘Our ability to make new kinds of life can be seen as the newest way in which organic memory—life’s recall and activation of the past in the present—becomes more acute’” (B. Clarke 2008, p. 174).
- 4.
This would only apply to germline interventions which are heritable and therefore enduring, and not to somatic interventions which perish along with the subject.
- 5.
The use of technology is not uniquely or exclusively human; for example, beavers build dams and birds construct nests. Nature is replete with examples of exquisite and elegant technological solutions that humans cannot even come close to replicating.
- 6.
Another possibility which has not received as much attention is that we may not change at all in any meaningful or substantive way, or that we even become biologically extinct—meeting the same fate as over 99.99% of the species have in the history of life on Earth (Margulis and Sagan 1997b, p. 66).
- 7.
The neurological research Catherine Malabou cites in her book, What Should We Do with our Brains?, goes to support Varela’s theory of enaction. She describes the brain as plastic rather than flexible. By plastic, she means that it has “the capacity to receive form…[as well as] the capacity to give form.” (Malabou 2008, p. 5) Flexibility, she argues, allows only for the ability to accommodate, to submit; but the brain is not merely an acquiescent organ that simply responds to and is imprinted by external phenomena—it is also generative; that is, it “co-occurs with a radical modification of the economic and social environment” (Malabou 2008, p. xii). This new model rejects the rigidity and passivity that has been associated with earlier research on the brain. “Plasticity, far from producing a mirror image of the world, is a form of another possible world.” (Malabou 2008, p. 80)
- 8.
To the degree that the ontological distinctions are a matter of interpretation reflects the co-dependence and co-evolution of both the evolving materialization as well as the ongoing narrative of the posthuman subject (hence also an autopoietic entity); one therefore cannot be understood without examining the other as well.
- 9.
In the film Aliens, the overriding directive of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation—who sponsored the mining expeditions to Space—was to keep the alien specimen intact at all costs, even at the expense of the entire human crew (though this was for reasons of commercial and scientific exploitation rather than preservation of the specimen for the sake of itself).
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Lockard, E.S. (2014). Futures of Human Evolution. In: Human Migration to Space. Springer Theses. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05930-3_6
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